Montazeri Memoirs Online

["Kamran D. Rastegar" <kdr7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Montazeri.com vs. Montazery.com: Ayatollahs wage war on Internet
Friday 15 December 2000 - Agence France Presse

PARIS, Dec 15 (AFP) - Dissident cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri, once in line
to be Iran's supreme leader, this week dropped a political bombshell by
publishing his memoirs onthe Internet and provoking a cyber war with the
leadership in Tehran.

Montazeri, 79, who had been chosen to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,
founderof the Islamic republic, has been living under house arrest in Qom,
south of Tehran, eversince he was forced to resign weeks before Khomeini's
death in 1989.

A fierce opponent of Iran's current supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei,Montazeri in recent years has from time to time managed to
make his opinion known through his sons.

But he struck a hard blow on Monday when he published a 600-page memoir on
an Internet site based in Britain, which his sons veried as his work.

The document, published in Persian and available at www.montazeri.com,
providesimportant testimony to some of the most dramatic moments of the
revolution and thewar with Iraq.

Authorities in Tehran have so far not publicly reacted to Montazeri's
memoirs but on Thursday a counter-site -- www.montazery.com -- appeared on
the internet and described itself as representing the office of Khamenei.

Most noteworthy on the first site are Montazeri's remarks on how he tried
in 1988 toprevent the summary execution of thousands of opponents to the
Khomeini regime.

He states that Khomeini ordered the executions after the opposition
launched a fierceoffensive against Iranian troops from bases in Iraq.

"All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed,"
the clericquotes Khomeini as saying in a written note.

Montazeri said he decided to intervene to prevent the killing of 2,800 to
3,800 men bywriting a letter to Khomeini in which he appealed for
compassion.

"I told myself 'I am after all the Imam's successor and I took part in
this revolution'," hesays in his memoirs. "If an innocent man is killed, I
am also responsible."