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In a shocking action, an interview with a cleric named Seyed Hamid Rohani was published in the radical pro-government newspaper, Vatan-e Emrooz. Rohani is introduced in the article as a historian and author of a three-volume book about Imam Khomeini. The original interview was conducted with Sepidar, a Tehran University Basij student publication. In this interview, Hamid Rohani has demanded executions of imprisoned political dissidents in order to stop the roots of the problems Islamic Republic of Iran has been facing since the elections. Though other individuals had previously talked about a serious confrontation with the opposition and political prisons, this is the first time a pro-government publication is explicitly publishing statements from a pro-government figure who is suggesting executions of dissidents on its main pages.

While the Iranian government has maintained silence on the subject of the 1980’s mass executions of its political dissidents, an event during which it is said thousands were hung during a few weeks and for which no one has accepted responsibility, Rohani talks about the planned nature of the executions and validates them.

He has implicitly recommended to Islamic Republic authorities to use the mass executions of dissidents as a method which has been successful once before in suppressing and stopping activities of dissidents. International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran demands this newspaper’s apology to its readers and to ... >>>