Memoirs of Akbar Hashemi – May 26, 1999

Employees of the Jomhuri-ye Eslami newspaper came to see me. Mr. [Masih] Mohajeri, [managing editor of Jomhuri-ye Eslami], gave a report, and I spoke at length about the newspaper and the responsibilities of the press. Mr. [Abolghasem] Vafi, [a member of the Society of Seminary Teachers of Qom], came to see me. He discussed the appointment of the head of the Judiciary and the views of Qom’s religious scholars regarding the government. He said that yesterday, during and after Mr. Khatami’s speech in Qom, two opposing groups had chanted contradictory slogans.

Mr. [Seyyed Jalaleddin] Taheri Esfahani, the Friday Prayer Leader of Isfahan, came to see me. He said that the situation in Isfahan was not good and that, if things were the same elsewhere, it would be dangerous. He attributed the situation to the arrests of Mr. [Gholamhossein] Karbaschi and Mr. [Mohsen] Kadivar. I told him that another group of people considered these arrests beneficial. He requested foreign currency for a trip to London to seek medical treatment for his grandchild.

At noon, Fati came and said that the public response to the campaign to help patients with rare diseases had been substantial and that donations were increasing day by day. In the afternoon, a group of seminary students from Rafsanjan came to see me. Mr. Kazemi gave a report and said that we had about 150 students from Rafsanjan studying in the seminaries. I offered them some advice, urging them to take advantage of the favorable conditions available to seminary students today. I gave them copies of my books as gifts.

The wife of Mr. [Gholamreza] Javadi, [Deputy for the Secretariat of the Expediency Discernment Council], came to see me. She was distressed by his arrest and believed that he had been the target of a conspiracy. Among the foreign news reports, the limited clashes between India and Pakistan in the Kashmir region were noteworthy.