Behind the Headlines/July 9

In tonight’s program of Behind the Headlines:
On the anniversary of the student movement of 1999 we speak to Ahmad Batebi, one the leaders of that uprising.

In the second part of the program we speak to the former pilot of Iran’s Air Force Khosrow Beitullahi about the military coup/uprising of Noujeh (Shahrokhi) and ask him what were the aims of the action and who or which country betrayed them?

And is it true that the late Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar was behind that uprising?

And as we know, more than 200 people were executed after the discovery of the plan, the “reformist” Saeed Hajarian was the chief interrogator of the arrested officers and soldiers in the regime’s torture chambers.

Ahmad Batebi:

The 18th of Tir Student Uprising began its life following the closure of Salam daily. The paper had published a letter by Saeed Imami of the Ministry of Intelligence that said he believed the serial murders of Iranian intellectuals and writers had been ordered by the regime and he had been instrumental in carrying the killings.

The students in the Amirabad dormitory had staged a protest against the closure of the Salam Daily but were attacked by the plainclothes members of the Basij and members of the intelligence ministry.

This was a movement in waiting to burst into life after 12 years of people waiting to benefit from the post-war reconstruction plans that had promised some social reforms but never did.

Our student movement has always received unconditional support from our people. However, in those days we did not have the social media of today to communicate with the wider society so they could come to our defence in face of the attack.

At the time the regime’s leadership including Khamenei himself condemned the savage attack on the students but at the end nobody was convicted or sentenced for the crimes that they did.

Instead, more than 4000 students were arrested and the late Akbar Mohammadi, Lohrasbi and Deldar and myself were sentenced to death.

The disastrous part of that tragic event was that the government of reformists were in fact part of the regime and people like Jalaiepour whose hands are smeared with the blood of our Kurdish people still say that their main objective is to save the regime even if this means killing our fellow Iranians.

The reformist movement in Iran is now nothing more than an agency that advertises regime’s staged elections to attract people to polling stations when needed.

Khosrow Beitullahi:

We had to act before too late as the country was on the verge of collapse. Our objective was to get our country back from the new religious regime. Most of the commanders of the Iranian army had already been executed and we knew that the killing machinery of the regime was still in motion.

We had therefore put our lives in serious risk but had pledged to offer it to the cause of liberation of Iran, a pledge that we had already committed ourselves to when we joined the army.

The trials of the arrested officers and soldiers were just a show as Khomeini had already issued their death sentences.

We had to go along with our plan despite all the dangers to set an example for the future generations. Our only aim was to free Iran.