Reformist Details Evidence of Abuse in Iran’s Prisons

          
          Reformist, I carroubi, Details Evidence of Iran Prison Abuse - NYTin s ,com lttp://www ,ifln'cs.coni'2009/09/15/world/middleeast/l5iranltml?fta—.. ,
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          September 15, 2009
          By NAZILA FATHI
          Reformist Details Evidence of Abuse in Iran's Prisons
          TORONTO — A leading opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi , issued a statement on Monday giving new
          details of prison abuse allegations in k n, just days after a judicial panel rejected such claims and the
          country's supreme leader warned of a “harsh response” to those making them.
          Another top opposition figure, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Mi Montazeri, urged fellow clerics in a new
          statement posted on his Web site on Monday to throw their support behind the opposition and to speak
          against “the violations that are happening under the name of religion.” Later, the ayatollah's Facebook page
          reported that three of his grandsons, i8 to 22 years old, were arrested that evening in Qum, at the home of
          his son and their father, Ahmad Montazeri, who runs the ayatollah's office.
          Mr. Karroubi and another opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi , were candidates in the June 12
          presidential election, which they say was swung to the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ,
          through extensive fraud. The ensuing protests were crushed with unnecessary brutality, they said, including
          the torture and rape of some of the thousands of people arrested.
          Monday's statement was a response to the judicial panel, which dismissed Mr. Karroubi's documentation of
          the abuses as fabricated. In the statement, Mr. Karroubi said the documentation included information on
          four abuse cases, including photographic evidence of bruises caused by rape, telephone numbers of those
          who had been abused and their relatives, and detailed accounts from the victims on video.
          He brushed off the government's threats of arrest, saying “the real trial is before the people, and one should
          ask them whom they condemn and who they believe is defending their rights.” He also vowed to continue
          to speak out about what he called a “disgrace upon the Islamic republic and Iran.”
          The two opposition statements on Monday, and Internet reports of plans for protests on Friday in Tehran
          and several other large cities, underlined what appears to be the government's inability to extinguish the
          opposition movement, which enjoys considerable support in the clergy and from some senior officials in the
          government.
          Ayatollah Montazeri, long a critic of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Mi Khamenei , raised the pitch of his
          attacks, referring to Ayatollah Khamenei's “military rule” and expressing regret for his own role in
          cementing the “rule of the jurist” in the Constitution after the 1979 revolution. That provision established
          the position of supreme religious leader, first held by the Islamic republic's revolutionary founder,
          Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini .
          Ayatollah Montazeri was a close ally of Ayatollah Khomeini and his designated successor until he fell out of
          10/26/2009 3:08 PM
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          Reformist, I carroubi, Details Evidence of Iran Prison Abuse - NYTin s ,com lttp://www ,ifln'cs.coni'2009/09/15/world/ m iddleeast/l5iranltml?fta—.. ,
          favor in 1988.
          Some opposition Web sites posted videos on Monday of a young man who described being raped while in
          custody, and then being forced to go into hiding after authorities threatened to kill his family for his
          cooperation with Mr. Karroubi in making the rape allegations public.
          The judiciary resumed mass trials of detainees on Monday. The opposition has dismissed them as show
          trials devised to portray the protests as a part of an attempted “velvet revolution.” The session was the first
          since the appointment of the new leader of the judiciary, Sadeq Larijani, who had promised that a large
          number of detainees would be released under his leadership.
          State television reported the indictment on Monday of a prominent student leader, Abdullah Momeni, who
          is accused of “spreading reports via Internet to provoke the unrest.” Reading from the indictment, Tehran's
          deputy prosecutor, Mi Ahmad Akbari, said that that Facebook, the Internet and YouTube were “used as
          effective tools to organize illegal gatherings and to spread false information,” the ISNA student news agency
          reported.
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