posted February 15, 2001 09:23               

TEHRAN A former member of a militant religious radical group, Amirfarshad Ebrahimi has been handed down a two-year jail term plus 50 lashes of whip by a court of common pleas for beating up two former reformist ministers, the Iran Student News Agency ISNA said Monday.

The agency quoted Ebrahimi's father as saying his son, a former member of the fundamentalist vigilantes of Ansar-e Hezbollah has been slapped with the said sentences for his involvement in an assault on the former interior minister Abdullah Nouri, a popular reformist now serving a jail
sentence on charges of inciting religious and political dissent, and former culture minister Ataollah Mohajerani who resigned under conservative pressure last year.

Ebrahimi is also involved in the alleged revelation of the existence of dissent and hostility among Iranian leaders through a fake video cassette. The cassette allegedly contained his confessions prepared by two reformist lawyers, Mohsen Rohami and Shirin Ebadi.

Rohami and Ebadi, received a suspended 18-month jail sentence each after the conclusion of their "in camera" trial for publication of sensitive material relating to Ebrahimi. Their sentence also bans them from the practice of their profession for five years.

In his confessions which formed part of the transcript of the case, Ebrahimi divulged that Ansar members were told to disrupt public meetings, beat up reformist activists and assault on Nouri and Mohajerani.

Rohami was the private prosecutor in the students' case against Farhad Nazari, the former Tehran police chief who, along with several of his subordinates, stood trial for last July's violent assault on a Tehran
University dormitory. Nazari was sacked from his job, but was acquitted of all the charges.