11/3/2009 Release Jailed Iranian Women, Mousa...
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November 3,2009
Release Jailed Iranian Women, Mousavi's Wife Urges
By REUTERS
FHed at 3:14 a.m. FT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The wife of Iran's opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi has called on the
authorities to release women jailed after the disputed June presidential election, the reformist
Kaleme website reported on Tuesday.
“We demand immediate and unconditional release of all (political) prisoners, particularly those
women who have been arrested since the election,” the website quoted Zahra Rahnavard as
saying.
Moderate defeated presidential candidates Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi have urged their
supporters to take to the streets on November 4, the 30th anniversary of the U.S. embassy
takeover in Tehran. A reformist website said Karoubi will attend the rally.
Anti-U.S. rallies will take place outside the former American embassy, now called the “den of
espionage” in Iran, to mark seizure of the embassy after Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution when
radical students took 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Some reformist websites have called on people to gather outside the Russian embassy instead,
in an apparent protest at Moscow's recognition of Ahmadinejad's re-election on June 12.
The vote sparked Iran's worst unrest in the past three decades and exposed deep divisions in
the establishment. The opposition rejects the vote as rigged, saying Ahmadinejad's government
is illegitimate.
The authorities say the vote was “the healthiest” since the revolution. Iran's top authority
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said last week it was a crime to question the election.
AVOID ILLEGAL GATHERINGS
Iran's Revolutionary Guards and allied Islamic Basii militia suppressed the post-election
protests and thousands were arrested. Over 100 of them, including former senior officials,
lawyers and activists are still in jail.
Iran's hardline clerical establishment, trying to avoid any repeat of the huge demonstrations say
security forces will confront any “illegal” gatherings, warning the opposition not to use the anti-
U.S. rallies on Wednesday to stage new protests.
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11/3/2009 Release Jailed Iranian Women, Mousa...
“Today, our duty is to defend the revolution and the Velayat-e faqih (Islamic jurisprudence),”
Mohamadreza Naqdi, head of Iran's volunteer Basij militia, was quoted as saying by the Hayat-
e No daily.
The opposition says more than 70 people were killed in the post-election violence. The official
death toll is 36 people.
Tehran's prosecutor also called on Iranians to be careful about “diversionary” slogans at
Wednesday's rallies, the official IRNA news agency repofted.
“Those who try to disrupt the anti-American rallies on Wednesday will be confronted,” said
Abbas Jafari.
(Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Alison Williams)
Copyright 2009 Reuters Ltd.
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