Tehran, July 16: Iran's embattled Reformist President Mohammad Khatami today ordered two ministers to investigate a mounting crackdown by the hardline judiciary on journalists and dissidents, the official news agency IRNA reported. "The way that journalists and other citizens are being treated is raising questions," the President was quoted as writing in a letter to the ministers of justice and intelligence.

"The law is not something to be observed only by citizens. The law must also be observed by us," Khatami insisted, calling on the two ministers to "immediately and seriously investigate" a wave of arrests. Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi today admitted that an Iranian-Canadian photo-journalist who died after her arrest here last month had suffered a "brain haemorrhage caused by a beating".

Abtahi, a reformist, also made the dramatic claim that the death of 54-year-old Zahra Kazemi was linked to wave of arrests carried out by regime hardliners seeking to undermine the embattled pro-reform camp. A wave of other arrests has targeted the Reformist press since an outburst of virulent anti-regime protests in mid-June and July.

Yesterday, two journalists were arrested, bringing to six the number of journalists detained in the Islamic Republic in less than a week.

Bureau Report