Iranian officials call for arrest of opposition leaders
Revolutionary Guard generals, top politicians and senior clerics have called for the arrest and punishment of opposition leaders, including defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, Iranian state media reported Sunday, while the national police chief acknowledged that protesters had been mistreated while in custody.[…]
“In order to end this mayhem, they need to arrest, try and punish these political figures,” Gen. Yadollah Javani, head of the political office of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, advised the judicial system Sunday, according to state news agency IRNA. “These individuals should be prosecuted, punished and tried as traitors.” He singled out Mousavi, fellow defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi and former president Mohammad Khatami. The Revolutionary Guard is a force that plays a highly influential role in politics.
Mohammad Karami-Rad, a member of the parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, told Iran’s Journalists Club on Sunday that the government was pursuing a complaint against Mousavi, but he did not provide details.
Coupled with the trials already underway, charges against Mousavi and other top opposition figures would mark an unprecedented attempt to purge a faction that has been part of the nation’s political fabric since the Islamic revolution 30 years ago. It comes after a decades-long dispute between the faction now represented by Ahmadinejad and the one now led by Mousavi, which erupted into open conflict in the run-up to the elections. [continued…]
Iran’s president purges Intelligence Ministry
Ian’s president has conducted a purge of the nation’s Intelligence Ministry, sweeping aside ranking officials with decades of experience in favor of loyalists, said a lawmaker, several news websites and a former intelligence chief’s son.
The move, chronicled by news outlets Sunday, underscores the deep rifts and disarray within the highest echelons of the country’s security apparatus since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 12 reelection. [continued…]
Iran’s Karoubi says some detainees raped in jail
Iran’s defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi said some of those detained after the country’s disputed June presidential vote had been raped in detention, according to his website on Sunday.
“Some senior officials told me that … really shameful issues … Some young male detainees were raped … also some young female detainees were raped in a way that have caused serious injuries,” the website quoted a letter Karoubi wrote 10 days ago to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of a powerful arbitration body, as saying. [continued…]
Iran admits election demonstrators were tortured
Iran’s police chief admitted yesterday that protesters who were arrested after June’s disputed presidential election had been tortured while in custody in a prison in south-west Tehran. But he denied that any of the detainees had died as a result.
General Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam said the head of the Kahrizak detention centre had been dismissed and jailed. “Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Moghaddam as saying.
Human rights groups had previously identified at least three detainees they said had died after torture at Kahrizak, which was closed last month on the orders of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moghaddam denied that the abuses were responsible for any fatalities there, claiming that an unspecified “viral illness” had caused the deaths. [continued…]
