The Iranian regime’s parliament approved on Sunday most of the ministerial candidates introduced by Hassan Rouhani. The new cabinet includes sixteen members with a background in the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), the main force responsible for repression and killings inside Iran and export of terrorism to countries of the region.
Rouhani’s choice for Justice Minister, Alireza Avaie, had a role in the 1988 “Death Committee” that sent over 30,000 political prisoners to their deaths. Avaie was a key member of the Death Committee in Khuzestan province in southern Iran in 1988.
Rouhani acknowledged before parliament that Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, his choice for Ministry of Communications, was previously an agent of the notorious Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
Rouhani told the parliament: “Mr. Jahromi attended the meetings of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace for a while on behalf of Mr. Alavi (Minister of Intelligence), when he was in the Ministry of Intelligence.”
“The reason I insisted that he join [the cabinet] was because we have a lot of complicated issues in security matters. If I am not in a meeting, one must be there to know the security,” the state-run television network quoted Rouhani as saying on August 20, 2017.
Jahromi has been involved in torture, interrogation and censorship in the Ministry of Intelligence since he was 21, and played a distinct role in the crackdown on the 2009 uprising.
As the director general of the eavesdropping section of the Ministry of Intelligence, due to his services to the regime’s intelligence, he quickly progressed and at the age of 38 was promoted to the post of Minister.
In describing his allegiance to the regime’s Supreme Leader, Jahromi said in the regime’s parliament: “I will always follow and will follow the Velayat-e faqih (supreme religious rule). we will not deviate from the line of the leader and we will not be disappointed.”
He added: “Our doctrine in the field of cyberspace is only one doctrine, and it is the doctrine of the Supreme Leader [Khamenei], who had said that the threat of cyberspace is so much that it has turned into a killing field for the youth.”
While substituting the word ‘people’ for the ‘regime’s leaders’, Jahromi attempted to justify his suppressive measures: “People are asking us to cleanse and clean our cyberspace.”
“In 2012, the total employment in the cyberspace sector was 45,000. In 2013, it was 50,000 and in 2016 it reached double to 100,000 and we owe this to the development of the national information network,” he said.
Information disclosed about the records of Jahromi reveals that, in addition to identifying the regime’s opponents through eavesdropping, especially in the uprising of 2009, he was involved in raids on the homes of detainees, and inspecting and confiscating their property and interrogating them.
Jahromi has also been involved in the import of “psychedelic pills for interrogation”, and has already plundered millions of dollars from its sales.
Jahromi, who worked in the feared Intelligence Ministry from 2005-2009, is infamous for building parts of the Iranian regime’s “massive surveillance infrastructure.”
After 2009 he was involved with the Inteligence Office of the Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC).
The repressive records of this intelligence element of the regime are such that Mohammad Ali Pourmokhtar, a member of the regime’s parliament, said that “secrecy and lack of transparency” is a feature of Jahromi.
He urged Rouhani, “With the introduction of Azari Jahromi as the Minister of Communications, don’t convert this ministry into the Ministry of Intelligence.”
After these disclosures, the Ministry of Intelligence, in a statement, defended this torturer and called him “clean” and …”revolutionary.”
The makeup of the new Rouhani cabinet signifies that he will continue to pursue his previous line in his second term as president.
At least 3,100 executions have been carried out since Rouhani first took office, and undoubtedly the wave of repression and suppression will continue.
Source » ncr-iran