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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran's second rioters trial put back to Saturday |
| 2009-08-06 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] The second hearing in the trial of about 100 protesters, including top reformists, has been postponed to give the defense more time, the official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday. The session, scheduled for Thursday, will now take place on Saturday, the report said. "The session has been postponed because 10 lawyers defending some of the accused needed more time to study individual charges. So the court gave them two more days," IRNA quoted a court statement as saying. A lawyer defending three accused reformists confirmed the defense team needed more time. Last Saturday, about 100 people who disputed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election went on trial in a revolutionary court in Tehran on various charges, including rioting after the June 12 vote. Several top reformists and aides of opposition leaders backed down in the first session from earlier allegations, saying that Ahmadinejad's victory was clean and there had been no fraud in the election. Another 10 protesters were put in the dock in a separate trial on Sunday. Iran's main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and former reformist president Mohammad Khatami have denounced the trials. Mousavi said on Sunday that confessions made by protesters at a closed-door trial were made after they were put through "medieval-era torture." Khatami added that the court had relied on "confessions taken under certain circumstances which are not valid." |
| Posted by:Fred |