Tehran, July 30: Iranian-Canadian journalist Zahra Kazemi was the victim of a "murder" when she died in custody, Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi said today. "The most likely hypothesis is that, as the inquiry commission report says, the cause of the murder was a blow to the head which caused a haemorrhage," Abtahi said as he left the weekly cabinet meeting.
The report commissioned by President Mohammad Khatami concluded that kazemi died from a blow to the head following her arrest on June 23 but did not say whether it was inflicted deliberately or accidentally, or even self-inflicted. And Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mussavi Lari said the government was standing by the conclusions of three medical reports that there were no other traces of injuries to Kazemi's body.
Meanwhile news agency reports quoted the spokeswoman for a parliamentary commission investigating the case, reformist Jamileh Kadivar, as saying that the blow was "very technical and could not have been performed by just anyone."
Some members of the commission agreed that the blow had been carried out with the intention of leaving no trace, Kadivar added. Bureau Report