99% of Iran's parliament favors trials for hostages

A leader of the conservative Muslim bloc that controls Iran's parliament said Monday that 99 percent of the lawmakers favor trying the 52 American hostages as spies unless the ousted Shah and his money are returned. Hojatol-Eslam Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the fundamentalist leader of the Islamic Republican Party, made the statement to the newspaper of the Revolutionary Gurads, the Message of the Revolution. The demands he stated are the same made by Muslim militants who seized the US Embassy and the Americans Nov. 4.