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Mass detentions of potential pro-reform leaders muting opposition
Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation, in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the June 12 disputed presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come away from the crowds through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have also put dozens of the country's most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars. The Iranian government says only that unspecified figures responsible for fomenting unrest have been taken into custody. The arrests have drained the pool of potential leaders of a protest movement that claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election by fraud. They also point to the potential for high-profile trials -- and serious sentences -- before a special judicial forum created to handle cases from the unrest. With the main reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi under constant police surveillance, protests demanding a new vote have withered. Many of those rounded up during demonstrations have been released within days. But most of those detained in raids against potential opposition remain in custody. That has spread fear among Mousavi supporters and left the opposition movement reeling. More than 200 arrests in crackdown "We heard some news about people who are arrested at night and we are worried if it could happen to us," a Tehran resident active in the protests wrote in an e-mail Friday, asking for anonymity for fear of government retaliation. The targeted arrests appear to have begun the day after the election. Several of Iran's best-known reformist politicians were taken into custody, including the brother and several close allies of former President Mohammad Khatami. Since then, at least 230 more students, professors, journalists and reformists have been arrested, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. At least 29 are known to have been released, the New York-based organization said in a list released Wednesday, although it acknowledged that the numbers were constantly changing. The crackdown appears to have grown bolder as the government escalated its use of force on the streets. Security agents arrested nearly the entire staff of Mousavi's newspaper, The Green Word, Monday night, seizing 25 people in a raid on its offices, according to a statement on Mousavi's Web site. Four or five who were out of the office during the raid remain free, according to the paper. Posted by: Fred 2009-06-28 |
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