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Iran Hands Down Jail Terms Over Controversial German Conference
TEHRAN (News Agencies) - Iran on Saturday handed down stiff jail terms to several leading reformists over a conference in Germany deemed unIslamic that prosecutors charged was aimed at overthrowing the clerical regime.
The German foreign ministry swiftly summoned the Iranian ambassador to Berlin over the affair, which also saw a translator from Germany's Tehran embassy slapped with a 10-year prison sentence.
German press reports say Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder had already called off a planned visit to the Islamic republic in light of the affair.
Several close allies of Iranian President Mohammad Khatami were among those sentenced, including maverick journalist Akbar Ganji, long a thorn in the side of Iran's conservatives, who was also given a 10-year prison term.
Ganji was also slapped with a five-year internal exile in the southeastern city of Bashagard after finishing his prison term.
His lawyer, quoted by the official IRNA news agency, said Ganji got four years for attending the conference and six years for an array of other serious charges, including spreading propaganda against the Islamic regime.
Ganji had written a series of articles implicating leading figures in the regime in the 1998 murders of several dissidents and intellectuals.
The Berlin conference, staged in April by a foundation with links to Germany's Green party, centered on the future of political reforms in Iran after reformists won a parliamentary majority in last February's elections.
The gathering, which was disrupted by the Iranian opposition in exile, was deemed unIslamic in part because a man disrobed in protest and a woman danced with bare arms. The footage was shown on state television here.
Ganji was also convicted of insulting Islamic Iran's founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, as well as current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His lawyer said he would file an appeal.
The German embassy interpreter, Said Sadr, was given 10 years while another translator, Khalil Rostam-Khani, was handed a nine-year sentence, a family of one of the defendants said.
Meanwhile, student leader Ali Afshari, political head of Iran's largest pro-reform student group, was given a five-year sentence, his lawyer told IRNA.
Afshari, who was already in prison over a fiery campus speech last month challenging the authority of Khamenei, was given four years for taking part in the conference and one year on other charges. He will also appeal.
The Tehran Times, citing a statement by his Office to Consolidate Unity student group, said earlier Saturday that Afshari had "disappeared" after being taken for questioning on January 3rd. He still faces other charges.
Sources said other defendants were handed sentences of up to four-and-a-half years, including dissident nationalist Ezatollah Sahabi of the banned, but tolerated, secular Iran Freedom Movement.
The 75-year-old Sahabi was also arrested in December after a speech at the same rally with Afsahri. Four women were among the others reportedly convicted, including two women's rights activists.
Six people were reportedly acquitted, the sources said, among them one of Iran's leading female politicians, Jamileh Kadivar, wife of former culture minister Ataollah Mohajerani.
There was no immediate word on the fate of dissident cleric Hassan Yusefi-Eshkevari, who was being tried by a separate religious court for members of the clergy.
The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel, in its edition appearing on newsstands Monday, reports that Schroeder has called off a planned visit to Iran.
"The positive political context needed for the visit is lacking," the magazine quotes a source close to the chancellery as saying.
Khatami, whose visit to Germany last year was seen as a watershed in Iran's efforts to improve its image on the international stage, had invited Schroeder.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer summoned the Iranian ambassador for "urgent talks" on Sunday to express his "deep concern" about the verdicts, a ministry spokesman said in Berlin.
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