Iran!s Rafsanjani avoids Friday prayers over vote unrest Special Coverage... http://www.reuters.coni/article/GCA•Iran/idUSTRE57A1DW2009O81 1
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Featured Brokersponsoreci link TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's influential
former president Akbar Hash emi
Rafsanjani will not lead Friday prayers
this week to avoid possible unrest over
the country's disputed presidential vote, newspapers reported on
Tuesday.
Challenging the authority of Iran's most powerful figure Supreme
Leader Ayatollah All Khamenei, Rafsanjani declared the Islamic republic
in crisis during his last Friday prayer sermon in July and demanded an
end to arrests of moderates.
After Rafsanjani's sermon on July 17, clashes erupted between police
and followers of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, who says the
June vote was rigged to secure the re-election of hardline President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
“To avoid any possible clashes at Friday prayers, he will not lead the
prayers this week,” the office of Rafsanjani, also the head of the
Assembly of Experts, said in a statement, the Etemad daily reported.
The June 12 presidential vote plunged Iran into its biggest internal
crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening divisions
in its ruling elite.
Rights groups say hundreds of people, including senior pro-reform
politicians, journalists, activists and lawyers, have been detained by the
authorities since the election.
Iranian official media have said at least 26 people died in violence after
the poll.
Rafsanjani, an architect of the Islamic revolution, has warned the
post-election power struggle would harm the establishment.
Reformist former president Mohammad Khatami, defeated candidates
Mehdi Karoubi and Mousavi have denounced Ahmadinejad's new
government as “illegitimate.” Ahmadinejad was officially sworn in on
Wednesday.
In an attempt to uproot the opposition and to end street protests, Iran
held two mass trials of moderates, including several prominent figures,
charged with offences that included acting against national security by
fomenting unrest.
An Iranian Revolutionary Court on Saturday charged a French woman,
two Iranians working for the British and French embassies in Tehran
and dozens of others with spying and aiding a Western plot to
overthrow the clerical rule.
Espionage and acting against national security are punishable by death
under Iran's Islamic law.
Rafsanjani is one of the four rotating Friday prayer leaders in Tehran.
(Writing by Zahra Hosseinian, Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
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Iran 's Rafsanjani avoids Friday
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