Hezbollah Ready to Slaughter

Rooz Online:

Ansar-e Hezbollah, the vigilante group that carries the weight of numerous murders and disruption of sit-ins during the last twenty years, and was active during the reform years of president Khatami’s term while curtailing some of its blatant crimes, has issued a statement that talks of the “new era of responsibilities”.

It directly asks the populace to bring back the first days of the revolution by fulfilling their duty in slaughtering the opposition that has made its presence apparent and thus bring the movement back from its deviations after the Iraq-Iran war.

Political analysts believe the return of Ansar-e Hezbollah is the consequence of Ahmadinejad’s presidential victory, noting that he was elected through their support and vote, just as those of other right-wing hardliners. The statement is indicative of the new role it is calling for.

Seven years ago, at the time when the reformists succeeded in attaining official power, cleric Hojjat-ol-Islam Parvazi, the Friday prayer leader of the Ansar met Abdullah Nouri, the then Minister of the Interior responsible for the law and order of the provinces and informed the minister that the group was intent on committing certain murders. Nouri informed his superiors but since no action had taken place, the issue was not pursued. Parvazi later publicly revealed the financial resources of the group and the contacts and support they enjoyed in high political circles, all belong to the extremist right-wing political groups. He then went underground for fear of his own life, and is reported to have surfaced outside the country. The next series of revelations about the group came after the assassination attempts on the lives of Abdullah Nouri (Minister of the Interior) and Ata-ollah Mohajerani (Minister of Guidance and Islamic Culture) and the discloses of the official serial killings, when one of its members and a student Amir Farshad Ibrahimi went to Mohsen Rahami the lawyer of the student who had been injured in the Tehran University Dorm attack incident that killed a student and announced his readiness to expose the group and its activities. Three days later, in the presence of Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, the attorney Rahami, and a representative of Human Rights Watch, Ibrahimi undraped the criminal activities of Ansar, providing names, addresses, account numbers etc. The names of the highest echelons inside and outside the government were connected to Ansar and its activities, proving what Hojjat-ol Islam Parvazi had exposed earlier. The hardliners launched their damage control and finally arrested Ibrahimi while the two attorneys who tried to defend him, Shirin Ebadi and Mohsen Rahmani also ended up in solitary confinement prison cells. After four years in prison, Ibahimi finally fled from Iran. At the time, the Ministry of Intelligence was no longer in the hands of the extreme hardliners and so Ansar split up into two factions, with its prominent members announcing they had opted for “cultural activities”. But the other faction continued its terrorist activities, and its financial resources were never cut off, despite the bankruptcy of their ways, but only switched to some conduits in the city of Qom. Some of its members such as Mehdi Nassiri and Masoud Deh-Namaki change their line of activities and engaged in investigative journalism and film-making respectably, while some others such as Hossein Allah Karam and Haj Bakhshi were put in charge of some money making institutions by right-wing clerics such as Mesbah Yazdi.

When the latest presidential elections went into a run-off mode, Ansar was again reactivated to provide organization and support for the hardliners and Ahmadinejad in particular. In its statement, Ansar congratulates Ahmadinejad’s accession to the presidency, calling it the missing link of the revolution which would correct the path of the Islamic movement. It further says that one of the benefits of president Khatami’s presidency was that the true face of the opposing forces was exposed.

The statement specifically criticizes the Ministry of the Interior for deviating from its course and for being infiltrated with traitors. At the end, the statement orders its supporters to identify those responsible for the current state of affairs, thus providing the conditions for the slaughter of these “elements”.

Read More