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Leading Iranian reformist shot, injured

TEHRAN: Saeed Hajjarian, one of the leading architects of Iran's reform movement, was shot on Sunday by unknown attackers who fled on a high-powered motorcycle, witnesses said.

They said Hajjarian, a former deputy intelligence minister and a confidant of President Mohammad Khatami, had been hit in the face and possibly in the shoulder from a distance of less than three metres (yards).

"The gunman had aimed his gun at Hajjarian's temple but because his hand was shaking the (first) bullet struck him the face," Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaei, a colleague of Hajjarian's on the Tehran city council, told the state news agency IRNA.

IRNA said Hajjarian, also a pro-reform newspaper editor, was in intensive care at the nearby Sina hospital suffering from a swelling of the brain and respiratory problems. Earlier, it had described his condition as stable.

"Hajjarian is still in a coma. It is too early to say anything about his condition," Mohammad Reza Zafarqandi, head of the emergency team, told IRNA.

"One bullet entered through his left cheek and remains lodged at the back of his neck," he said, adding it was too early to consider surgery to remove the bullet.

Outside the hospital, well-wishers, friends and colleagues prepared for the worst.

Rasoul Montajabniya, a reformist cleric, told reporters as he left the hospital that Hajjarian was breathing only with the aid of a ventilator.

"He is alive but his condition is not good," he said.

Witnesses told Reuters the attackers had been cruising the nearby streets on a 1000-cc motorcycle. This size of machine, once popular as getaway vehicles in political killings, is outlawed in Iran except for use by police and security personnel.

Mehdi Qasemi, a university student who was outside the city council building at the time, told Reuters the gunman had fired twice from no more than three metres (yards) away.

Other witnesses said the gunman, wearing a helmet, had approached Hajjarian and shot him with a Colt revolver.

IRNA said the attack had taken place in central Tehran. It said witnesses had provided the police with descriptions of the attackers and their motorcycle.

Top politicians including the chief of staff from Khatami's office rushed to the hospital to be at Hajjarian's bedside.

Hajjarian was one of the masterminds of the reformists' big victory in last month's parliamentary polls, and there was widespread speculation he would soon step down as editor of the Sobh-e Emrouz daily to begin full-time political work.

His newspaper has been in the forefront of the pro-refrom movement, aggressively exposing what it says is a hardline circle within the Intelligence Ministry involved in the murders of dissidents dating back many years.

After leaving the Intelligence Ministry, Hajjarian joined other leftist theoreticians in political exile at think-tanks and universities before returning to politics in the wake of Khatami's 1997 election victory.-Reuters