Iranian Opposition Offices Are Raided

          
          Iran Raids Offices and Arrests Aides to Opposi on Leaders - NYTinies,com 1ttp://www ,r tinies.coni'2OO9/O9/O9/wor1d/midd1eeast/O9iran1tm1?_r—...
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          oCTOBER. 30TH.
          September 9, 2009
          Iranian Opposition Offices Are Raided
          By NAZILA FATHI
          TORONTO — The Iranian authorities on Monday and Tuesday raided offices connected to two senior
          opposition leaders in Tehran, arresting their top aides and seizing documents, Iranian news agencies and
          the leaders' Web sites reported.
          The two opposition leaders, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Moussavi , ran against President Mahmoud
          Ahmadinejad in the June 12 election, which they say was rigged by the government.
          Mr. Karroubi, a former speaker of Parliament, has further charged that men and women detained in the
          crackdown after the election were tortured and raped while in custody.
          Late Tuesday night, security forces arrested Alireza Hosseini-Beheshti, Mr. Moussavi's top aide, according
          to mowjcamp.com , a Web site linked to Mr. Moussavi.
          Earlier on Tuesday, as Mr. Karroubi watched, the authorities sealed his office, which had led the effort to
          document the prison abuses, the semiofficial ILNA news agency reported . Mohammad Davari, the editor of
          Mr. Karroubi's Web site, was arrested during the raid, the IIIIG's Persian-language Web site reported, and
          another aide, Morteza Alvin, was arrested at his home.
          Also on Tuesday, security forces emptied and sealed the office of the Association for the Defense of
          Prisoners' Rights, opposition Web sites reported. The office was founded by a reformist journalist,
          Emadedin Baghi.
          On Monday, the authorities raided an office run by a Moussavi aide that recently said it had confirmed the
          deaths of 72 protesters. The government has maintained that only 30 people were killed, while some
          human rights organizations say hundreds may have died.
          The disputed election and subsequent protests opened a breach in the government's leadership that has
          only widened over the summer. On Sunday, Mohammad Khatami , the former reformist president, gave a
          speech in which he criticized the government's “fascist and totalitarian methods” and urged his supporters
          to expand their protests.
          Tn light of Mr. Khatami's speech, many in the opposition detected a broader purpose to the new raids than
          merely cutting off the prison-abuse investigations. They are widely seen as a possible prelude to the arrests
          of Mr. Karroubi and Mr. Moussavi — a provocative step that hard-line clerics and military commanders
          have been calling for lately.
          “In a more immediate sense, they are shutting sources of information about prison abuse,” said Payam
          10/26/2009 11:38 AM
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          Iran Raids Offices and Arrests Aides to Opposi on Leaders - NYTinies,com 1tp://www ,r times ,coni'2OO9/O9/O9/wor1d/midd1eeast/O9iran1tm1?_r—...
          Akhavan , a professor of international law at McGill University in Montreal, who is a former United Nations
          war crimes prosecutor and a founder of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. “But it is also a sign
          that they want to move to the next stage to solidify their power by arresting opposition leaders.”
          The government may also be concerned about a fresh outburst of protests, with the opening of the country's
          universities on Sept. 23 the next potential flash point. A senior commander of the Revolutionary Guards
          said recently that the security forces were preparing to deal with possible protests, the ISNA news agency
          reported Tuesday.
          “We will have a meeting with university officials next week to coordinate how to confront possible
          incidents,” the commander, Mi Fazli, was quoted as saying.
          The Revolutionary Guards are banned from entering university campuses, but not so the Basij
          paramilitaries, who have frequently attacked students.
          According to government figures, about 140 political activists, journalists and former government officials
          who were rounded up after the protests exploded are still in jail. But an independent human rights group,
          the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, said in a statement on Tuesday that the actual
          number was closer to 400.
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