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World Jewish News
Khameini orders probe into fraud claims in Iran's elections
15.06.2009
Iran's state TV reported Monday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered an investigation into claims of fraud in last week's presidential election.
Khamenei ordered the powerful Guardian Council to examine the allegations by pro-reform candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims widespread vote rigging in Friday's election. The government declared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner in a landslide victory.
It is a stunning turnaround for Iran's most powerful figure, who previously welcomed the results.
Meanwhile, the Iranian Embassy in Moscow announced Monday that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had put off a visit to Russia, and it was unclear whether he will come at all.
Ahmadinejad had been expected to travel to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg and meet on Monday with President Dmitry Medvedev on the sidelines of the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in which Iran was to attend as an observer.
The change in plans came amid street protests in Iran following Ahmadinejad's re-election in a bitterly disputed vote Friday.
On Sunday, Mousavi wrote an appeal to the Guardian Council, a powerful 12-member body that's a pillar of Iran's theocracy. Mousavi also met Sunday with Khamenei.
Mousavi's backers have waged three days of street protests in Teheran.
"Mousavi and Rezaie appealed yesterday. After the official announcement (of the appeal) the Guardian Council has seven to 10 days to see if it was a healthy election or not," Reuters quoted Guardian Council spokesman Abbasali Kadkhodai as saying.
"After reviewing their complaints, the result will be announced to the candidates," Kadkhodai said, according to Iranian ISNA news agency.
Iranian authorities also banned anti-government protesters from staging a planned rally on Monday, but a top aide to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi vowed his followers would heed his call for a march through Tehran.
Mousavi and his supporters have shown no sign of backing down against an expanding security clampdown - bringing their rage to the streets for two straight days over claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole last week's election with vote rigging and fraud.
Mousavi, who served as prime minister during the 1980s, has appealed directly to Iran's all-powerful ruling clerics to cancel the results of Friday election that showed the hard-line president with a landslide re-election. But chances to wipe out the results were very remote, leaving Mousavi's backers with few options other than taking to the streets.
Iran's Interior Ministry rejected a request from Mousavi to hold a rally and warned any defiance would be "illegal," according to a report on state radio.
The ministry said that "legal action will be taken against those disrupting public order."
Mousavi has threatened to hold a sit-in protest at the mausoleum of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, if authorities ban his followers from holding their rally. Such an act would place authorities in a difficult spot: embarrassed by a demonstration at the sprawling shrine south of Tehran, but possibly unwilling to risk clashes at the hallowed site.
A reformist activist close to Mousavi, Shahab Tabatabaei, said his supporters are determined to hold rally despite the ministry's rejection.
Overnight, police and hard-line militia stormed the campus at the city's biggest university, ransacking dormitories and arresting dozens of students angry over what they say was mass election fraud.
The nighttime gathering of about 3,000 students at dormitories of Tehran University started with students chanting "Death to the dictator," but it quickly erupted in to clashes as students threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police, who fought back with tear gas and plastic bullets, said a 25-year-old student at the university who witnessed the fighting. He would not give one name, Akbar, out of fears for his safety.
The students set a truck and other vehicles on fire and hurled stones and bricks at the police, he said. Hard-line militia volunteers loyal to the Revolutionary Guard stormed the dormitories, ransacking student rooms and smashing computers and furniture with axes and wooden sticks, Akbar said.
Before leaving around 4 a.m., the police took away memory cards and computer software material, Akbar said, adding that dozens of students were arrested.
He said many students suffered bruises, cuts and broken bones in the scuffling and that there was still smoldering garbage on the campus by midmorning but that the situation had calmed down.
"Many students are now leaving to go home to their families, they are scared," he said. "But others are staying. The police and militia say they will be back and arrest any students they see."
"I want to stay because they beat us and we won't retreat," he added.
One of Mousavi's Web sites, said a student protester was killed early Monday during clashes with plainclothes hard-liners in Shiraz, southern Iran. But there was no independent confirmation of the report. There also have been unconfirmed reports of unrest breaking out in other cities across Iran.
Источник: JPost.com
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