The Return of Purged Intelligence Officials

Rooz Online: Special ROOZ report:

A group of former Intelligence Ministry agents are back in action to control Iran’s news media, this time working through the Security Department of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance. The group comprises of officials and agents who were involved - and discredited - in the so-called “serial murders” cases that involved the murders, imprisonment, harassment, etc of the country’s writers, journalists, intellectuals, and politicians during 1993-1999 years at the hands officials from the Ministry of Intelligence.

After these individuals were purged from the Ministry of Intelligence seven years ago, they continued their intelligence activities that became known as “parallel intelligence” under the supervision of Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, a deputy at the Ministry of Intelligence during Fallahian’s leadership of the Ministry. Pour-Mohammadi is currently the Minister of the Interior in president Ahmadinejad’s cabinet. This team has been active in confronting journalists and web-bloggers during the recent years. Their latest onslaught was last year when a large number of web-bloggers were arrested, imprisoned, tried and harassed.

What is new in their work is that now that they are back at the Ministry of Intelligence, they are tightly cooperating with agents in the Security Department of the Ministry of Islamic Guidance. In fact, this office at Guidance has been the conduit for the directives and plans of the team at the Intelligence Ministry. During the last few weeks, journalists and writers have been called to appear at the Guidance’s offices and respond to questions from the security agents. Those that refrained from appearing there, were given very stern warnings and threats. Those that did, whether on their first call or subsequent, were treated in a very humiliating, threatening and confrontational manner so that a number of them have told ROOZ that they are not in a position to even return to their previous jobs and work. Among those that had been called in by Guidance are: a member of the journalists guild, a number of writers from reformists newspapers, a number of journalists from shut-down newspapers, and some writers belonging to news agencies not belonging or controlled by the hardliners.

This new forum and approach speaks of a new method of controlling the press where the public center of operations has shifted from the Judiciary to the Ministry of Islamic Guidance, which in this case is run by the Ministry of Intelligence agents. It appears that those who have implemented the change believe that this way there will be less publicity and eyes on the issue. When the Judiciary was the frontline for attacking journalists and closing newspapers, the issue received wide international coverage and attention.

The new approach aims at preventing journalists and the media from publishing news that is considered detrimental to the hardline circles, both inside and outside the government.