Setback for Iran reform movement

By Jonathan Lyons

TEHRAN (Reuters): The conviction of Abdollah Nouri by a hardline clerical jury has effectively deprived Iran's pro-reform movement of its leading light ahead of next year's parliamentary elections.

The official IRNA news agency announced late on Thursday that a jury of theologians had found Nouri, a fellow cleric and crusading newspaper publisher, guilty on 15 counts in his dissent trial on 15 counts. He was acquitted on five others.

The clerics, all from the hardline faction that dominates the judiciary, also ruled that there were no mitigating circumstances. However, the judge of the Special Court for Clergy must still issue a final verdict and pass sentence.

"There was a broad consensus among the right-wing that Nouri had to be silenced," pro-reform editor and commentator Saeed Leylaz told Reuters last Friday.

"The jury was not deciding for itself and the judge will not sentence him on his own. There has been broad consultation with the higher-ups," said Leylaz.

Under Iran's election law, the conviction provides the conservative Guardian Council with automatic grounds to strike Nouri from the ballot for the February 2000 parliamentary elections.

The combative cleric, top vote-getter in this year's Tehran city council race and a close ally of President Mohammad Khatami, was tipped to be the next Speaker of parliament if reformists captured a majority of seats.

The ruling also paves the way for closure of Nouri's outspoken Khordad newspaper, now the leading pro-reform voice in Iran.

But Nouri remained defiant, vowing to aides and colleagues not to appeal the ruling of what he has maintained all along was an illegal court.

"The court's ruling is completely irrelevant to me. I do not care about it because the court is unlawful and incompetent to try me," Leylaz quoted Nouri as telling him after the verdict was announced. "Because of this, I will not even appeal."

The court and its backers within the religious establishment have paid a heavy price for the verdict.

The six days of hearings made for front-page news in all reformist newspapers, giving Nouri a powerful tribune to address some of the most sensitive issues in the Islamic republic.

The Nouri camp distributed copies of his detailed defense statements to the domestic and foreign press, effectively circumventing the judge's attempt to keep a lid on the debate.

In the course of the trial, which supporters likened to the medieval Inquisition, Nouri challenged the conservative notion that Iran's supreme clerical leader was a law unto himself.

He defended the rights of dissident groups and theologians to present their views in his newspaper, a right he said was protected under the constitution.

He also rejected the conservatives' self-proclaimed monopoly on religious and political interpretation, arguing that pluralism was justified under the Islamic system as long as all parties remained loyal to the law of the land.

Such views, while common enough within Iran's seminaries, have never before been given such a public airing.

Analysts say the trial also badly undermined confidence in the clerical court, a powerful institution not provided for in the constitutional, heralding its possible collapse.

"(The case) was tried in order for the right-wing to solve the 'Nouri problem,'" wrote commentator Akbar Ganji just before the verdict was made public.

"So this trial has solved the problem of Nouri but many other issues and problems have been created, leading to the even bigger problems for the Special Court for Clergy."