‎Some 212 Majlis lawmakers wrote a letter to Majlis assembly speaker Ali Larijani ‎yesterday asking him to stand up to the court summons that have been sent to lawmakers ‎by Tehran’s prosecutor general and other judiciary officials. ‎

Noting that “according to Article 86 of the Constitution, lawmakers are immune from ‎judicial investigation in performing their duties,” the signatories of the letter criticized the ‎raid and search that was conduced of Karaj representative Fatemeh Ajorlou’s house, and ‎the recent confrontation of Saeed Mortazavi with Tehran’s representative Alireza Zakani, ‎writing, “Prosecution officials are sent in the middle of the night to search the home of a ‎‎[Majlis] representative or the prosecutor issues a statement to the press containing all ‎kinds of insult to another representative, and what is worse than all else is that this ‎statement guarantees threats to representatives serving on the Judicial Inquiry and ‎Review Committee.”‎

The representatives who signed the letter, regarded the recent actions of Tehran’s ‎prosecutor general as the judiciary’s response to lawmakers in the seventh Majlis who ‎cooperated with the Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee to the legislative branch’s ‎investigation of the judiciary, adding, “This issue not only undermines the independence ‎of the last bastion of law and the respectful and holy place of lawmaking, but also ‎tarnishes the judiciary’s independence.”‎

The authors of the aforementioned letter ask Hashemi Shahroudi, “Are we to believe that ‎one of the most key posts in the judiciary is occupied by an unreasonable individual who ‎confronts logical and reasonable words with insults and curses, and does someone like ‎this fundamentally have the credentials to continue occupying this dangerous post, and in ‎all sincerity where is the judiciary headed with individuals like this?”‎

Ajorlou: Mortazavi is Ma’lum al-Hal ‎

The confrontation between Tehran prosecutor Mortazavi and Alireza Zakani, the head of ‎the Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee’s Ministry of Education and the Azad ‎University task force, heated up last week after news of further arrests and detentions ‎related to Abbas Palizdar’s case broke out and officers from the Tehran prosecutor’s ‎office interrogated conservative Majlis deputy Fatemeh Ajorlou in the middle of the night ‎last Monday. Palizdar had questioned the integrity of the judiciary, in addition to ‎prominent conservative figures, for failing to tackle corruption. ‎

It was after Palizdar’s arrest that the judiciary implicitly accused members of the seventh ‎Majlis Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee for taking part in this “conspiracy.” ‎Following Palizdar’s arrest, the first move was to interrogate Fatemeh Ajorlou, ‎conservative seventh Majlis deputy and Palizdar’s cousin. Ajorlou was the person ‎responsible for introducing Palizdar to Judicial Inquiry and Review Committee. ‎

With Ajorlou’s summons on accusation of participating in revealing confidential ‎documents and Palizdar’s instigation to reveal the documents, she referred to Tehran’s ‎prosecutor as a “Ma’lum al-Hal” person and threatened Mortazavi of revealing secrets ‎related to the case of sale of university entrance examination questions. Mrs. Ajorlou ‎was interrogated for 11 hours and two more Majlis representatives were subsequently ‎summoned. According to a letter from the second branch of the administrative court to ‎the Majlis leadership, which was published by some newspapers yesterday (Tuesday), ‎Hassan Kamran and Mohammad Dehghan are the two representatives that were ‎summoned to the aforementioned branch on orders of Tehran’s prosecutor general in ‎connection with Abbas Palizdar’s case. ‎

Mortazavi and Zakani; Who is the Slanderer? ‎

Some time ago, in an open letter that was published by Iran daily, the administration’s ‎official newspaper, Zakani accused the management of Azad University of charges ‎related to the sale of university entrance examination questions and condemned judiciary ‎officials for failing to adequately confront the perpetrators in the case. ‎

Zakani accused Mortazavi that, by elongating the processing of the trial related to sale of ‎university entrance examination questionnaire since 2004, he has engaged in destruction ‎of evidence and trial materials by failing to document logs of cases related to this matter ‎from across the country, and has engaged in “destruction of hints related to the sale of ‎university entrance examination questions.” ‎

These remarks enticed Mortazavi, who is an alumni of the Azad University and is an ‎honorary professor at the northern Tehran branch of this university, to issue a harsh ‎statement containing unprecedented literature, accusing Zakani of “mental imbalance.” ‎Mortazavi’s rebuttal was published in the same daily. ‎