In Iran, thousands of followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini held a rally in Teheran on Saturday (9 June) to demonstrate their support of the country's new Islamic administration, and also to mark the fortieth day since the assassination of the Ayatollah Morteza Motahari.

SYNOPSIS: The rally was held in a park in central Teheran. The Ayatollah Motahari was assassinated on the first of April as he left the home of a Prime Ministerial aide. It was the second political murder since the February revolution which overthrew the government of the Shah of Iran and established the rule of the previously exiled Ayatollah Khomeini. An organisation called Forghan claimed responsibility for the shooting. The group is a little-known extremist faction which advocates fundamental Islamic principles while condemning political rule by Moslem priests, or Mullahs.

The Ayatollah Motahari was said to have been the head of Iran's ruling Revolutionary Council and one of Ayatollah Khomeini's chief aides. A crowd estimated at more than a million attended his funeral procession, chanting pro-Khomeini and anti-Communist slogans. The vast majority of Iranians belong to Ayatollah Khomeini's Shia Moslem sect. The Forghan group also claimed responsibility for the other political assassination since the overthrow of the Shah-that of Major-General Gharani.

Discontent among the various religious and political factions in Iran erupted again on Monday (11 June) when some four thousand demonstrators marched through Teheran, calling for an Islamic revolution in neighbouring Iraq. More than half the population of Iraq also belong to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Shia sect, and the country has been accused of executing an air raid on Kurdish border villages in Iran at the beginning of June in which six people were killed.