64
sin
you were told.194
When Khomeini took power, his revolutionary followers set up
kangaroo courts and dragged one victim after another before the
bench--executing a total of 10,000 "criminals and
counter-revolutionaries."195 The "revolutionary tribunals" met at mid-
night, carried on their proceedings in secrecy, refused to let the accused
defend themselves, and often did away with victims because of some
private grudge held by one of the self-appointed "revolutionary
judges."
Iranian prime minister Mehdi Bazargan felt this was an outrage.
But Khomeini defended the operation of the tribunals as true Islamic
"justice." According to Iranian historian and journalist Shaul Bakash,
"Khomeini took the view that the insistence on open trials, defense
lawyers and proper procedures was a reflection of 'the western
sickness among us,' that those on trial were criminals, and 'criminals
should not be tried, they should be killed.'" Khomeini's notion of
justice, then, was our idea of despotism.196
The "crimes" for which people were exterminated under the
Ayatollah's "revolutionary courts" ranged from membership in the
wrong political party to "corruption on earth." On July 3, 1980, two
middle-aged women and two men were dressed in white robes in the
town of Kerman, led to a plot of open ground, buried up to their necks,
then stoned to death. The women were charged with prostitution, the
men with "sexual crimes." The judge who had passed sentence hurled
the first stone. The country's chief prosecutor was wildly enthusiastic
about the executions. Stoning appears in the holy book, and the
exultant high official said, "We approve of anything in the Koran." 197
Not everyone agreed that the state should be ruled by a gang of
ecclesiastics. But the clerics vigorously enforced their dominance,
organizing personal armies, encouraging the creation of revolutionary
brigades armed with machine guns, and controlling the Hezbollah,
gangs of Moslem zealots armed with clubs. If secular-minded groups
that was not allowed. Real freedom meant the right to worship as
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