DATE=7/7/2000
TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP
TITLE=U-S PRESS HITS IRANIAN SPY TRIAL OF JEWS
NUMBER=6-11915
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
CONTENT=
INTRO: Daily newspapers throughout the United States
are reacting angrily to the guilty verdict handed down
by a court in Iran to ten of 13 Iranian Jews accused
of spying for Israel.
We get a sampling now in today's U-S Opinion Roundup.
TEXT: The internal battle for control in Iran
continues. It pits many of the nation's young people
who support moderates including the current President
Mohammad Khatami, against the hard-line religious
clerics personified by Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei.
He still controls the military, the police and the
court system.
It is one of those "revolutionary courts" where the
judge serves as prosecutor, judge and jury, which has
returned a guilty verdict against ten of 13 Jews
accused of espionage for Israel and some other
nations.
The trial, which several U-S newspapers are calling a
fraud, took place in the southern City of Shiraz. The
defendants were ordinary citizens, a group made up of
students, a university professor, a shopkeeper, some
office workers and others, ranging in age from 16 to
48. According to independent news reports, none had
access to sensitive government information.
Many papers in the United States and around the world
consider this a continuation of the harassment against
Iranian Jews traceable to the Islamic revolution in
1979. During that time, at least 17 Jews have been
summarily executed for such officially described
crimes as "spying" or " waging war against God and the
country." The sentencing of these latest individuals
on the spying charges has brought down a wave of
criticism on the Iranian judicial system.
Typical is this editorial excerpt from The Los Angeles
Times, which calls the trial:
VOICE: ... a parody of justice from beginning
to end. ... [casting] a chill over the 30-
thousand members of a Jewish community whose
roots in Iran go back more than two-thousand
years.
TEXT: Up the California coast, The San Francisco
Chronicle is one of several U-S dailies using the term
"kangaroo court" [Editors: American slang meaning a
court in which the verdict is predetermined,
regardless of the facts] to describe the proceedings.
VOICE: Iran's swirling politics, pitting hard-
liners against reformers, may explain the unfair
conviction of ten of 13 Jews accused of spying.
Or it may be anti-Semitism, hatred of Israel, or
an outrageously low standard of justice. In any
case, the kangaroo court verdicts ... have
shamed Iran. It wants to emerge from a decades-
long shell of religious isolation, but its legal
system undercuts this intention.
TEXT: Turning to Florida, The Miami Herald is at
least pleased the defendants are still alive, having
avoided the death penalty that has befallen several
other Jews as we mentioned in the introduction.
VOICE: Supporters consider it something of a
victory that the men are still alive. But the
very concept of justice demands these men be
exonerated and released. It must not escape the
notice of Congress, seemingly poised to lift
trade sanctions against Iran, that they haven't.
While the United States gravitates toward
"engagement" as a more-effective foreign policy
than "isolation," to be lifting trade sanctions
while these ... lives and President Mohammed
Khatami's efforts at reform hang in balance
sends a very wrong signal.
TEXT: More editorial anger from the Midwest in a
recent Chicago Tribune.
VOICE: The recent conviction of ten Iranian
Jews by a Revolutionary Court in Iran ... has
been condemned around the globe as a miscarriage
of justice. And by all appearances, it is.
Iran would argue otherwise, that the defendants
were, in fact, spies. But the rest of the world
is supposed to accept Iran's word on that,
because absolutely everything about this case is
shrouded in mystery.
TEXT: The Houston [Texas] Chronicle calls the
proceedings a: "Show Trial: [in which] Iran makes [a]
mockery of justice, [and] human rights."
VOICE: It is recognized that this show trial is
part of larger political wrangling within Iran
between hard-liners and more moderate elements
that would reach out to the outside world.
Until human rights are respected and the wrongs
represented by this sham of a trial are righted,
Iran will remain a political outcast.
TEXT: Lastly, The New York Times, calls the guilty
verdict for the ten defendants a "Wrongful Verdict"
and "a brazen violation of international human rights
standards and due process of law."
On that note of outrage from one of the nation's most
respected dailies, we conclude this sampling of
comment on the recent conviction for espionage of ten
Jewish citizens in Iran.
NEB/ANG/JBM
07-Jul-2000 13:52 PM EDT (07-Jul-2000 1752 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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