Tuesday, August 30, 2005

On Iranmania.com

Two years ago, this website, registered to Persicom Ltd in London, was caught with its pants down (by myself actually!) when it altered an AFP article about Shahzadeh Reza Pahlavi by inserting the following line (which you see here in bold) in one of the paragraphs:

"Pahlavi fled Iran when the 1979 Islamic Revolution ousted the monarchy headed by his father, Mohammad Reza, and now lives in the United States, where he still insists on being addressed as 'your highness'."

This article is available HERE as I write.

Anyway, two days ago I came across THIS article in the same website. Please notice the last paragraph:

“Takhti was found dead at one room in a Tehran hotel when he was 37. His popularity and sympathy for religious activists involved in anti-Shah political campaign brought the former regime to a situation in which they could not tolerate him and decided to assassinate him by misleading public opinion at the same time to thwart popular protest against the murder.”


In the real world, Emadodin Baghi, a researcher who lives in Iran, and with direct access to documents kept by the Islamist regime, has rejected the charge. Pahlavan Takhti’s sister has also dismissed the charge as fabrication. Even Takhti’s own son, Babak, who incidentally does hold the Iranian government responsible for his father's death, when asked by Shargh, “Is it possible to conclude that Takhti's death is still ambiguous, and that he is likely to have been killed?” replied: “This would certainly be out of question. I can give no definite comment on his death.”

I will, however, grant that "Iranmania" does know something about misleading public opinion.


---EDIT:

A short while after posting this message, a truly kind visitor, whom I cannot thank enough, has provided THIS article from the second volume of Important Personalities in Contemporary Iranian History by Dr. Mostafa Alamuti: After the revolution, the newspaper PAYAME AZADI (“Message of Freedom”) reported that the pro-Soviet Tudeh Party’s former first secretary, Kianuri, informed the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary court that Takhti was murdered by the Tudeh Party in order to point the finger at the Iranian government and the Shah. Thank you again and many thanks to ARYAMEHR.ORG for making this document available on the net.

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