March 12, 2000
Close Aide to Iran President Shot
Filed at 5:07 a.m. EST
By The Associated Press
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Attackers on Sunday shot and wounded aleading reformist who is a close aide to President MohammadKhatami, before escaping on a motorcycle.
Saeed Hajjarian was hit once in the face in the attack outsidethe Tehran Municipal Council building in central Tehran, theIslamic Republic News Agency said.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack.
Hajjarian, who is a member of the municipal council, was takento Tehran's Sina hospital after the attack.
Dr. Mohammad Reza Zafarqandi, a surgeon at Sina, said the bullethad lodged in Hajjarian's neck. He said Hajjarian was beingoperated on, but that he remained in a coma.
``There is a serious possibility of brain damage,'' Zafarqandisaid.
Senior government officials rushed to the hospital. Hajjarian'sfather, weeping profusely, was helped by several people into thehospital.
A crowd gathered outside the city council and police closed offthe road.
IRNA said Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei, another councilman,witnessed the shooting. The news agency quoted him as saying thatthe assailant fired twice.
Hajjarian is a former hard-liner who founded the notoriousIntelligence Ministry. He began to speak out for freedom ofexpression and greater political plurality after being removed fromhis position of influence and silenced for opposing the eight-yearpresidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani, who stepped down in 1997.
He later became an adviser to Khatami when he succeededRafsanjani.
During last month's legislative elections, which were swept bythe reformists, Hajjarian angered many of the losing hard-linerswith provocative statements.
``We have to clean the Parliament,'' he said during an electionrally. ``Some of the current members of Parliament are too old andnot usable any more and we have to put them in the garbage bin andthrow them away.''
Last year, Hajjarian was summoned to court by the Tehran JusticeDepartment over an article in the Sobh-e-Emrouz, which, accordingto the prosecutor, insulted Islam. He was released after beingquestioned.
When the reformists allied to Khatami swept parliamentaryelections last month, it dealt a serious blow to the hard-liners,who have tried to preserve the strict Islamic rule that has been inplace since Iran's 1979 revolution.
Hajjarian was elected to the municipal council in February 1999with the second greatest number of votes behind another topreformist, former Interior Minister Abdollah Nouri.
Before the municipal polls -- the country's first local electionssince the 1979 revolution -- Hajjarian, Nouri and three otherreformists were among 50 candidates disqualified by the board fortheir moderates views. But Khatami ruled the disqualificationsillegal.