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Daily Telegraph
By Anton La Guardia, Diplomatic Editor
 Iran's
hardline President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has packed his government with former security
and intelligence officials responsible for serious human rights abuses,
including the killing of thousands of dissidents in Iranian jails, a leading
human rights group said yesterday.
After Mr Ahmadinejad
caused renewed international outrage by calling the Nazi Holocaust of Jews a
"myth", a report by Human Rights Watch, based in New York, took aim
at his hardline cabinet - in particular the new
interior minister, Mustafa Pour-Mohammadi.
Mr Pour-Mohammadi, a
notorious former deputy intelligence minister, held the post from 1987 to
1999 at a time when his agents "systematically engaged in extra-judicial
killings of opposition figures, political activists and intellectuals",
HRW said.
The report, entitled Ministers of Murder: Iran's New Security Cabinet,
links him to the murder of thousands of political prisoners in Iranian jails
in 1988.
"The deliberate and systematic manner in which these extra-judicial
executions took place may constitute a crime against humanity under
international law," said HRW.
Mr Pour-Mohammadi was in
charge of foreign intelligence operations from 1990 to 1999, a time when
dozens of opposition figures were assassinated abroad.
"In some of these cases the hand of the Iranian government has been well
established, while in others there are credible allegations of government
involvement. Pour-Mohammadi is at the centre of
strong allegations of direct involvement in orchestrating these
assassinations," the campaign group said.
The minister was also implicated in a series of political murders of
intellectuals in Iran
in the 1990s, HRW said.
The campaign group also singled out Gholamhussein Mohseni Ezhei, the new minister
of intelligence, or "information", who had previously served as a
member of the judiciary that "spearheaded the prosecution of prominent
reformist clerics".
There was no immediate response from Teheran to the allegations last night.
Western diplomats familiar with Iran say the two men have long
been regarded as leading members of hardline
factions that have tried to roll back political reforms promoted by the
former president Mohammad Khatami. "If either
of them were to turn up in Europe for
medical treatment there would be a case for arresting them on the precedent
of Gen Augusto Pinochet," said one European official.
President Ahmadinejad faced another round of
western condemnation yesterday when he launched a renewed attack on Israel.
"They have invented a myth that Jews were massacred, and place this
above God, religions and the prophets," he said in a speech broadcast
live on state television.
"If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything,"
he added. "But if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the
Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to
scream."
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