ANKARA, Turkey -- Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini today ordered a crackdown on opponents of his Iranian Islamic regime and firing squads executed five more supporters of the guerrillas blamed for the June 28 bombing that killed 74 officials.
'I want the courts to take decisive action, as decreed by the Koran, against hypocrites and corrupt,' the ailing, 81-year-old revolutionary said in a message to the acting chief of the joint armed forces staff, Tehran Radio reported.
Khomeini's remark was short of pinpointing the Mojahideen Khalq, whom he calls hypocrites, as one of the chief targets of court action.
Revolutionary courts have executed an estimated 157 people either directly or indirectly accused of supporting former President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, since Bani-Sadr was fired by Khomeini June 22.
Khomeini also called for a renewed purge of the armed forces but did not specifically say whether he suspects elements of the military to be pro-Bani-Sadr.
'I want the armed forces to inform their commanders of misguided individuals so that such individuals can be handed over to courts,' Khomeini said.
'Violators will be punished,' he said. 'this is a warning to all commanders.'
The radio said three members of the Mojahideen Khalq were executed in the Caspian city of Sari after their conviction in the nearby town of Behshahr, both about 122 miles northeast of Tehran.
It said an Islamic court found the men, aged between 19 and 27, guilty of 'insulting the clergy and distributing Mojahideen leaflets.' The radio did not say which of the two charges brought the death sentences.
In the Caspian town of Noor, two members of the Marxist-Leninist Peykar group were executed for causing riots in Kurdish areas of northwestern Iran.
With two weeks to ago before Iran's presidential elections July 24, the ruling Islamic Republican Party nominated Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Rajai as its candidate, the Tehran newspaper Islamic Republic reported today.
The nomination was expected since former party chief Ayatollah Mohammed Beheshti suggested the 44-year-old premier as a candidate five days before he was killed in the bomb explosion at the party's headquarters.
Islamic Republic said Rajai was chosen as the joint candidate of the Islamic Republican Party, the Mojahideen Enghelab (Revolutionary Crusaders, a clergy-led militia) and societies of Islamic students. He was unlikely to have any strong opposition.
