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Iran makes arrests over torn picture of Khomeini
Tension has increased in Iran since student backers of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi on Dec. 7 clashed in Tehran with police in the largest such protests over June’s disputed election in months.
State television has broadcast footage of what it said were opposition supporters tearing up and trampling on a picture of Khomeini during the rallies, when pro-reform students sought to renew their challenge to hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The opposition has denied involvement in the reported incident, suggesting the authorities were planning to use it as a pretext for a renewed post-election crackdown on dissent.
”Those people who were at the site have all been identified,” Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadai said, quoted by ISNA news agency.
He said arrests had been made, including one on the day of the student rallies, without giving names or numbers.
“They are all in detention and one of them has confessed,” Jafari Dolatabadi said.
The prosecutor also said there would be “no mercy toward those who insulted the founder of the revolution,” the official IRNA news agency reported. Khomeini spearheaded the 1979 Islamic revolution and remains revered in Iran. He died in 1989.
‘Wrong thinking’
On Sunday, some moderate websites suggested Mousavi, who says the June 12 presidential poll was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad’s re-election, may be arrested. Mousavi has branded the Khomeini picture incident “very suspicious”.
Jafari Dolatabadi said, according to IRNA: “If some people think that they have some supporters and that they will not be summoned (by the judiciary), it would be wrong thinking.”
ISNA quoted him as saying that people “from both sides” had been arrested, suggesting government supporters may also be among the detainees. He did not elaborate.
The presidential election plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah three decades ago and exposed deepening establishment divisions.
Analysts say the internal political turmoil has further clouded prospects for any resolution of a long-running row with the West over Tehran’s nuclear programme, which Washington and its allies fear is aimed at making bombs. Tehran denies this.
The authorities have rejected opposition charges of vote fraud and portrayed huge pro-Mousavi protests that erupted after the poll as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic state.
Last week’s protests were much smaller than those in the days after the vote. But the mood seemed more radical with demonstrators chanting slogans against the clerical establishment and not just criticizing Ahmadinejad’s victory.
Reformist websites have reported about continued small, pro-Mousavi protests at several universities over the last week.
Crowds of clerics and other leadership loyalists have staged many pro-government rallies over the last few days to condemn the “insult” toward Khomeini, according to official media. Thousands of Mousavi supporters were detained after the vote, including senior reformers.
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