IRAN: There Is a Contract on the Shah

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Revolutionary trials are curbed, but so is the press

At least 213 defendants—including businessmen and news commentators as well as generals and politicians who served the old regime—have been executed by Iran's revolutionary tribunals, which pay little attention to such legal niceties as providing counsel for the accused. Last week the spiritual leader of Iran's revolution, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, belatedly took action to curb the killings. Khomeini issued an edict limiting the death sentence to those found guilty of murder, torture leading to death or the ordering of a massacre.

Khomeini's reprieve could spare many of the 1,500 political prisoners now awaiting trial at Tehran's Qasr prison. It might also mollify some Shi'ite leaders, including Ayatullah Sharietmadari, who believe that the tribunals should be more selective in their pursuit of revenge against the followers of the toppled Shah. But there will be no mercy for the Shah himself. Speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally, Ayatullah Sadegh Khalkhali, head of Tehran's revolutionary court, issued a worldwide murder contract for the exiled monarch, several members of his family and his closest advisers. "Anyone who wants to assassinate these people," Khalkhali proclaimed, would be considered "an agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Court." The owner of an Iranian newspaper offered an all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Mecca to anyone who killed the Shah.

The new death threat will add to the jitters of the Shah and his family, who are luxuriating in a heavily guarded compound on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. The Shah's daily routine of jogging, swimming, golf and tennis was disrupted three weeks ago by a power failure; his panicky guards believed that a death squad from the Palestine Liberation Organization had attacked. More recently, a group of Bahamian intellectuals has been agitating to have him expelled. Last week one of his close confidants told TIME that the Shah was considering a permanent haven in a Latin American country, perhaps Panama or Mexico.

Wherever the Shah ends up, there will be fewer Iranian newspapers around to report it. Apparently angered by an article about Forghan, a terrorist group that last month killed a member of Iran's ruling Islamic Revolutionary Council, the Ayatullah Khomeini declared that he would never again read Ayandegan, Tehran's leading morning daily (circ. 400,000). After thousands of rock-throwing demonstrators massed at the paper's office, editors published a farewell issue consisting of a front-page editorial and three blank pages. Said the editorial: "Until the government clarifies its position regarding the press and guarantees our professional rights, we cannot produce the paper."