Baha’is deny accusations of subversive activity
Published: Sunday, August 03, 2008
18:30GMT—2:30PM/EST
IRAN – BAHA’IS
Washington, 3 August (IranVNC)—The Baha’i International Community today strongly denied statements made by a Tehran prosecutor that seven jailed Baha’i leaders had confessed to setting up an illegal organization and taking orders from Israel and other countries in order to undermine Iran’s government.
“We deny in the strongest possible terms the suggestion that Baha’is in Iran have engaged in any subversive activity,” the Baha’i World News Service quoted the principal representative of the Baha’i International Community to the United Nations, Bani Dugal, as saying.
“The Baha’i community is not involved in political affairs. Their only ‘crime’ is the practice of their religion,” Dugal said.
According to Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency, Hasan Haddad, Tehran’s deputy prosecutor for security affairs had announced that the seven Baha’is who were arrested in May confessed to having ties with countries including Israel and “taking orders” aimed at “acting against the system of the Islamic Republic”.
Haddad added that their case is currently being investigated in the first branch interrogation.
But Dugal dismissed the allegations, saying: “Suggestions of collusion with the state of Israel are categorically false and misleading. The Iranian authorities are playing on the fact that the Baha’i world administrative center is located in northern Israel.”
The seven jailed individuals, who have been detained on security charges since May, comprised the entire leadership of Iran’s Baha’i community.
The announcement came on the heels of a resolution passed on 1 August by the US House of Representatives, condemning what it called the “state-sponsored persecution” of Baha’is in Iran.
House Resolution 1008, the tenth congressional resolution since 1982 on the Baha’is in Iran, follows reports earlier this week of a rise in arson attacks this summer on homes and cars belonging to Baha’is in the provinces of Kerman, Esfahan and Fars.
According to these reports, these attacks have increased following the arrest in May of the seven leaders of the country’s Baha’i community.
Sources: Baha’i World News Service, ISNA,
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