177, 110, 172, and 19), while three other articles (57, 177, and 110) make no reference to a court functioning under the authority of the Supreme Leader—which the SCC does. According to Kadivar, there is no doubt" the Special Clerical Court is currently and always has been "illegal”. “The only way" to legalize it would be to add "a new article (amendment) to it and change "all the aforementioned articles". Eshkevari, (who was defrocked and served several years in prison after being convicted by the Court of “spreading lies and insulting Islamic sanctities” among other charges) states the SCC "contradicts the modern law system” and “is clearly" guilty of "discrimination against the justice". Eshkevari states that the court acts very much like an inquisitional court of medieval times, —meeting in secret, doing without juries, wielding arbitrary powers, dealing severely with opponents of the ruler who may be too powerful for ordinary laws. Prosecutions of institutions The SCC do not only sentence criminal and dissident clerics. They also censor and confiscate works that might challenge the Supreme Leader's theological and jurisprudential authority, notably those works authored by senior Ayatollahs who oppose the velayate faqih or particular policies of the regime. On June 25, 2000, the SCC ordered the Tehran daily Bayan, run by Hojjatoleslam Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, to cease publishing. Mohtashemi was a former interior minister and aide to President Mohammad Khatami. In early August 1999, the Clergy court "imposed a five-year ban" on the newspaper Salam. Salam was founding in 1991 after a group of left-wing but "veteran revolutionary" pro-regime clerics, were not only banned by the conservative Guardian Council from running for the Assembly of Experts, but could find no newspaper even willing to print that news and their protest. (Despite its limited circulation and focus on influencing policy, the paper became very popular and helped elect reformist Muhammad Khatami president in 1997.) Prior to this ban, at least one of the clerics, Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, publisher of Salam, was convicted for defamation and spreading false information. Explanation for unique status The leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, also created the religious/political concept of velāyat-e faqih or "Guardianship of the (Islamic) Jurist", which held that since government should/must be run in accordance with traditional Islamic law (sharia), the rightful ruler (until the reappearance of the "infallible Imam") would be the