Arrests after Khomeini picture is ripped up
IRAN has arrested several people over the tearing-up of a picture of the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, during anti-government demonstrations last week.
The detentions were announced a day after Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave a stern warning to the pro- reform opposition, accusing it of violating the law by insulting the memory of the late revolutionary leader.
Tension has in
creased since student supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi clashed in Tehran with police on 7 December, the largest such protests in months over the disputed 12 June presidential election.
State television has broadcast footage of what it said were opposition supporters trampling on a picture of Ayatollah Khomeini, as students sought to renew their challenge to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The opposition has denied involvement in the incident, suggesting the authorities were planning to use it as a pretext for a renewed crackdown on dissent.
“Those people who were at the site have all been identified,” said Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi.
“They are all in detention and one has confessed.”
He said there would be “no mercy towards those who insulted the founder of the revolution”.
Ayatollah Khomeini, who died in 1989, spearheaded the 1979 Islamic revolution and remains revered in Iran.
On Sunday, some moderate websites suggested Mr Mousavi, who says the presidential poll was rigged to secure Mr Ahmadinejad’s re-election, might be arrested. Mr Mousavi has branded the Ayatollah Khomeini picture incident “very suspicious”.
Mr Jafari Dolatabadi said: “If some people think they have supporters and they will not be summoned (by the judiciary], it would be wrong thinking.”
A cleric representing Ayatollah Khamenei in the elite Revolutionary Guards suggested the authorities had been too soft on the reformist opposition and its media in the past.
“If we had broken the pens of men of letters and had erected gallows, they would not have assailed our beliefs in this way,” said Mojtaba Zolnour.