TEHRAN--More than 500 Iranian hardliners have pledged to sell one of their kidneys to pay for the murder of British author Salman Rushdie, condemned to death in a religious edict 10 years ago, a newspaper reported yesterday.
Islamic militia in the holy Shiite Muslim city of Mashhad are behind the campaign, which was endorsed by officials in the elite Revolutionary Guards, the hardline Kayhan daily said.
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran's late revolutionary leader, issued a fatwa condemning Mr. Rushdie to death in 1989. He accused the author, who only recently emerged from hiding, of blasphemy in his novel The Satanic Verses.
A total of 508 people, including six Muslims from countries outside Iran, have signed up to sell a kidney, Kayhan said.
Selling organs is legal in Iran, with transactions overseen by a state organs bank.
Kayhan said the organizers, part of the Basij volunteer militia force, planned to publicize their campaign on the Internet to seek worldwide support.
In a deal aimed at normalizing ties with Britain, Iran last year distanced itself from a $2.8-million (US) bounty offered by an Iranian Islamic foundation to execute Ayatollah Khomeini's decree.
But hardliners have tried to rekindle the Rushdie affair, flying in the face of efforts by Mohammad Khatami, the country's reformist president, to bury the issue.
Mr. Rushdie said last month he was putting his troubles with Iran behind him and had dropped plans to write an account of his decade under threat of death.
(text of December 29, 1999 National Post article)
Copyright National Post 1999 All Rights Reserved.
-IF YOU HAVEN'T COME TO THIS PAGE FROM THE ONE CONTAINING THE TEXT OF TERM OF REFERENCE 1) i)
TO CHRISTMAS, 1989 (DECEMBER 31,
1991) STATEMENT TO "IRANGATE" INDEPENDENT
COUNSEL LAWRENCE WALSH--THE LAST COMPONENT OF WHICH IS ABOUT TRANSLATERS OF "THE SATANIC VERSES"--THEN TAKE YOUR NEXT FOOTSTEP HERE.