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World Jewish News
Iran releases Rafsanjani relatives detained during protests
22.06.2009
A daughter of former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been released from detention, state television said on Monday.
Iran's English-language Press TV had reported that Faezeh Rafsanjani and four other relatives of the former president were detained during an unauthorized protest in Tehran on Saturday. The four other relatives were freed earlier.
"Rafsanjani's daughter released after brief arrest," Press TV said in a headline without giving details.
Last week, the semi-official Fars News Agency said Faezeh and her brother Mehdi had been barred from leaving Iran.
Faezeh addressed supporters of defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi last Tuesday when they gathered near the state television building in Tehran in defiance of a ban on opposition protests.
Her father, who remains a powerful figure in Iran, supported Mousavi in the June 12 election. Official results showed Ahmadinejad won by a landslide but Mousavi says the vote was rigged, a charge the authorities reject.
Rafsanjani reacted furiously when Ahmadinejad during the election campaign accused him on television of corruption, publicly urging Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to rein in the president.
Rafsanjani is perceived by Khamenei and Ahmadinejad as the individual backing Mousavi and the reformist camp.
Iranian state radio said on Monday that no unrest broke out in Tehran overnight and the capital had been calm for the first time since the disputed June 12 presidential election.
"Tehran last night witnessed the first night of calm and peace since the election," state radio said.
On Sunday evening, witnesses told Reuters shooting was heard in two northern districts of Tehran, which are Mousavi strongholds.
State television earlier on Sunday said at least 10 people were killed during street clashes in downtown Tehran the previous day.
Official results released on June 13 showing Ahmadinejad had won re-election by a landslide against Mousavi sparked the most widespread street unrest in Iran since its 1979 Islamic revolution.
Mousavi says the election was rigged, a charge the authorities reject. Mousavi, a moderate advocating better ties with the West, on Sunday called on his supporters to continue election protests but to show restraint.
Mousavi on Sunday urged supporters to continue protests over the re-election of Ahmadinejad, in a direct challenge to the Islamic Republic's leadership.
Mousavi's call came after at least 17 people were killed in the week-long clashes between police and demonstrators in Tehran.
Mousavi made a veiled appeal to the security forces to show restraint in handling demonstrations - a move likely to be viewed with deep suspicion by a conservative leadership that has vowed to use force wherever necessary to quell opposition.
Helicopters buzzed through the evening sky over Tehran and gunfire was heard in the north of the city, a bastion of support for the reformist former prime minister.
"Protesting against lies and fraud [in the election] is your right," Mousavi, who came a distant second to Ahmadinejad in the poll, said in a statement on his Web site on Sunday.
"In your protests, continue to show restraint. I am expecting armed forces to avoid irreversible damage," he added.
Iranian state television said 10 people were killed and more than 100 others injured in protests in Tehran on Saturday held in defiance of a warning from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. A separate report put the number of deaths at 13.
Mousavi said the mass arrest of his supporters "will create a rift between society and the country's armed forces."
A product of the Islamic establishment himself, Mousavi said on Saturday he was not questioning the fundaments of the Islamic Republic but sought to renew it and purge it of what he called deceit and lies.
Iran's powerful Guardian Council said Sunday there were some irregularities in the June 12 presidential election, which has been widely disputed and triggered bloody street protests.
The Guardian Council admitted that the number of votes collected in 50 cities was more than the number of eligible voters, the council's spokesman Abbas-Ali Kadkhodaei told the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) channel.
He said this amounted to about 3 million questionable votes, but added that "it has yet to be determined whether the amount is decisive in the election results."
The June 12 election which returned the anti-Western Ahmadinejad to power has sparked the most violent unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution which ousted the U.S.-backed shah.
The authorities have branded the protesters as "terrorists" and rioters. Tehran's police commander Azizullah Rajabzadeh warned police would "confront all gatherings and unrest with all its strength," the official IRNA news agency reported.
U.S. President Barack Obama, in the forefront of diplomatic efforts to halt an Iranian nuclear program the West fears could yield atomic weapons, has urged Iran to stop violence against protestors.
The tensions in Iran, a major gas and oil producer, assumed broader significance on Sunday with Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, telling French radio they had added to risks facing the world economy and underlined the need for strengthening the global financial system.
Gunfire and chants
In pro-Mousavi districts of northern Tehran, supporters took to the rooftops after dusk to chant their defiance, witnesses said, an echo of tactics used in the 1979 Islamic revolution.
"I heard repeated shootings while people were chanting Allahu Akbar [God is great] in Niavaran area," said a witness, who asked not to be named.
There were no immediate reports of casualties and the shooting appeared an attempt to break up unsanctioned protests.
Government restrictions prevent correspondents working for foreign media from attending protests to report. Iran ordered BBC correspondent, Jon Leyne, out of the country.
Pro-reform clerics meanwhile increased pressure on Iran's conservative leadership.
Mohammad Khatami, a Mousavi ally and a moderate former president, warned of "dangerous consequences" if the people were prevented from expressing their demands in peaceful ways.
His comments, carried by the semi-official Mehr news agency, were implicit criticism of Khamenei, who has backed a ban on protests and defended the outcome of the election.
An analysis of official statistics from Iran's Interior Ministry by Britain's Chatham House think-tank suggested that in the conservative Mazandaran and Yazd provinces, turnout was more than 100 percent.
It said that in a third of all provinces, official results would have required Ahmadinejad to take all former conservative, centrist and all new voters, and up to 44 percent of reformist voters, "despite a decade of conflict between these two groups."
The authorities reject charges of election fraud. But the highest legislative body has said it is ready to recount a random 10 percent of votes cast
Источник: Haaretz
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