KHATAMI INVESTIGATES SOUTHEASTERN RIOT. Seifullah Shahdad-Nejad, governor of the Kerman Province town of Shahr-i Babak, said on 26 June that President Khatami has dispatched a team to investigate the riot that took place there on the weekend of 24-25 January, IRNA reported. Shahdad-Nejad said delegations from the President's Office, the Interior Ministry, and the Kerman Governor-General's Office are all looking into the unrest. Security forces had killed four residents of Qasemabad village and injured many others when they attacked copper-factory workers who were striking, Mansur Suleimani-Meimandi, the parliamentary representative from Shahr-i Babak, Kerman Province, had said on 25 January according to Fars News Agency. The protest started in Qasemabad and then spread to Shahr-i Babak, the legislator said, adding that the workers were demonstrating for permanent contracts. (AFP quoted Suleimani-Meimandi as saying the unrest began in the Khatunabad village.) Shahdad-Nejad explained that the violence took place when riot police tried to prevent protestors from attacking the police headquarters and the governorate, adding that disgruntled copper-smelter workers were protesting layoffs when 300 motorcycle-riding individuals attacked the buildings. Shahdad-Nejad said baton-wielding police injured some people and objects hurled by the workers injured others. Shahdad-Nejad did not rule out the role of "a certain group," a locution that has come to be used to describe the hard-line Ansar-i Hizbullah vigilantes. (Bill Samii)