Brutality in Iran

Police Are Said to Have Killed 10 in Iran Protests
Published: December 28, 2009
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Police officers in Iran opened fire into crowds of protesters on Sunday, killing at least 10 people, witnesses and opposition Web sites said, in a day of chaotic street battles that threatened to deepen the country’s civil unrest.
The protests, during the holiday commemorating the death of Imam Hussein, Shiite Islam’s holiest martyr, were the bloodiest and among the largest since the uprisings that followed the disputed presidential election last June, witnesses said. Hundreds of people were reported wounded in cities across the country, and the Tehran police said they had made 300 arrests.

News agencies, citing an opposition Web site, said that Ibrahim Yazdi, a former foreign minister and pro-democracy leader, and Emad Baghi, a prominent human rights activist, were arrested early Monday. Mr. Yazdi was an adviser to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Mehdi Karroubi, an opposition leader who was among the losing candidates in the June election, was quoted Monday as saying on a Web site that the government’s actions in suppressing the protests on Sunday were even more brutal than the regime that was overthrown in the revolution, news agencies reported.

One of the dead on Sunday was Ali Moussavi, a 43-year-old nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

The decision by the authorities to use deadly force on the Ashura holiday infuriated many Iranians, and some said the violence appeared to galvanize more traditional religious people who have not been part of the protests so far. Historically, Iranian rulers have honored Ashura’s prohibition of violence, even during wartime.

In Tehran, thick crowds marched down a central avenue in midmorning, defying official warnings of a harsh crackdown on protests as they chanted “death to Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has expressed growing intolerance for political dissent in the country.

They refused to retreat even as the police fired tear gas, charged them with batons and fired warning shots. The police then opened fire directly into the crowd, opposition Web sites said, citing witnesses. At least five people were killed in Tehran, four in the northwestern city of Tabriz, and one in Shiraz in the south, the Web sites reported. Photographs of several victims were circulated widely.

Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.

Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot Mr. Moussavi. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.

In some parts of Tehran, protesters pushed the police back, hurling rocks and capturing several police cars and motorcycles, which they set on fire. Videos posted to the Internet showed scenes of mayhem, with trash bins burning and groups of protesters attacking Basij militia volunteers amid a din of screams.

One video showed a group of protesters setting an entire police station aflame in Tehran. Another showed people carrying off the body of a dead protester, chanting, “I’ll kill, I’ll kill the one who killed my brother.”

By late afternoon, coils of black smoke rose over central Tehran from dozens of street fires, and smaller groups of protesters continued to skirmish with police and Basij militia members. In the evening, loudspeakers in Imam Hussein Square, where most of the clashes took place, announced that gatherings of more than three people were banned, witnesses said.

There were scattered reports of police officers surrendering, or refusing to fight. Several videos posted on the Internet show officers holding up their helmets and walking away from the melee, as protesters pat them on the back in appreciation. In one photograph, a police officer can be seen holding his arms up and wearing a bright green headband, the signature color of the opposition movement.

The Tehran police denied firing on protesters and in an official statement late Sunday said five people had been killed “in suspicious ways.”

Ahmadreza Radan, deputy commander of state security forces in Tehran, said dozens of police officers had been injured and “some were killed,” the semiofficial news agency ISNA reported.

Protests and clashes also broke out in the cities of Isfahan, Mashhad, Shiraz, Arak, Tabriz, Najafabad, Babol, Ardebil and Orumieh, opposition Web sites said.

Foreign journalists have been banned from covering the protests, and the reports could not be independently verified.

If the 10 deaths are confirmed, it would be the highest toll since the summer, when huge crowds took to the streets to protest what they said was rampant fraud in the presidential election won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The White House condemned what it called the “unjust suppression” of civilians by the Iranian government on Sunday.

“Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States,” said Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council.

The turmoil revealed an opposition movement that is becoming bolder and more direct in its challenge to Iran’s governing authorities. Protesters deliberately blended their political message with the day’s religious one on Sunday, alternating antigovernment slogans with ancient cries of mourning for Imam Hussein.

“This is the month of blood, Yazid will fall,” the protesters shouted, equating Ayatollah Khamenei with Yazid, the ruler who ordered Imam Hussein’s killing.

The protests may have received a boost from the death last week of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a patriarch of Iran’s Islamic Revolution who became a fierce critic of the country’s leaders, especially in recent months. His memorials have brought out not only the young activists and students who have dominated the protests in recent months, but also older and more conservative people, who revered him for reasons of faith as well as politics.

Sunday was the seventh day since his death, an important marker in Shiite mourning rituals. Late Sunday, the authorities declared martial law in the city of Najafabad, Ayatollah Montazeri’s hometown, the Jaras Web site reported.

The government crackdowns on mourning ceremonies in the past week provoked many people in the more traditional neighborhoods of south Tehran as earlier clashes did not, some residents said.

“People in my neighborhood have been going to the Ashura rituals every night with green fabric for the first time,” said Hamid, 33, a laborer who lives in the southern Tehran neighborhood of Shahreh-Ray and declined to give his last name. “They have been politicized recently, because of the suppression this month.”

Yet few protesters expected the scale of the bloodshed that broke out on Sunday. The memory of Imam Hussein is so potent among Shiites that killing for any reason is strictly forbidden on Ashura, and Iranian leaders have always tried to avoid violence or even state executions during a two-month period surrounding the holiday.

“Ashura is a very symbolic day in our culture, and it revives the notion that the innocents were killed by a villain,” said Fatemeh Haghighatjoo, a former member of the Iranian Parliament who is a visiting scholar at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “Killing people on Ashura shows how far Khamenei is willing to go to suppress the protests.”

In another sign of the breadth of the crackdown, security forces on Sunday raided the offices of a clerical association in the holy city of Qum that has supported the opposition since the June election, the Jaras Web site reported. Guards surrounded the house, and members of the association and their families — who had gathered inside the association’s headquarters for an Ashura mourning ceremony — were not allowed to leave, the site reported.

Mr. Radan, the police deputy commander, said that only one of the protesters killed in Tehran had been shot. Two were run over by cars and one was thrown from a bridge, he said.

But a doctor working at Najmieh Hospital in Tehran said Sunday night that the hospital had performed 17 operations on people with gunshot wounds. They were treating 60 people with serious head injuries, including three who were in critical condition, said the doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.
Robert F. Worth reported from Beirut, and Nazila Fathi from Toronto.
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Iran seizes opposition figures
Security forces in Iran have arrested a number of prominent critics of the government in the wake of opposition protests that left as many as eight people dead.

Ebrahim Yazdi, who served as foreign minister in the early months of Iran's 1979 revolution, and Emadeddin Baghi, a human rights campaigner and journalist, were arrested on Monday, according to the pro-opposition Rahesabz website.

There were also reports that two aides to Mohammad Khatami, a former reformist president, and three advisers to of Mir Hossein Mousavi, an opposition leader, were detained.

Security forces reportedly stormed a series of opposition offices in an apparent crackdown following fierce clashes at street protests during the Shia Muslim commemoration of Ashoura.

Seyyed Ali Mousavi, Mousavi's 35-year-old nephew, was among the eight people killed, with the Parlemannews website saying he was shot during clashes at Enghelab square "and was martyred after he was taken to Ebnesina hospital".

State television attributed his death to "unknown assailants".

Reports of violence, including that police fired on protesters during the protests, could not be independently verified because foreign media are banned from covering protests.

'Suspicious death'

Ahmad Reza Radan, Iran's deputy police chief, acknowledged that "several people" had been killed, but denied that police had used guns to contain the protests.

Referring to four of the deaths, Radan said: "One fell off a bridge, two died in car accidents and one was killed by a bullet."

"As the police was not using firearms this [death] is suspicious and it is being investigated," he said.

Opposition leaders criticised the government for the killings in what are some of the bloodiest confrontations in Iran since the demonstrations that followed the disputed June 12 presidential poll.

"What has happened to this religious system that it orders the killing of innocent people during the holy day of Ashoura?" Mehdi Karroubi, one of the defeated reformist candidates in the election, said in a statement reported on the Jaras website.

The website also said that unrest had spread to other parts of Iran, including the holy city of Qom, Shiraz, Isfahan, Najafabad, Mashhad and Babol.

Security forces attacked

But others played down the protests. Kian Mokhtari, a columnist and political commentator in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that reports of the protests had been exaggerated.

"There are 10 million Basji [religious security forces] in Iran and if the Supreme Leader intended to crack down - you can't call this a crackdown," he said.


New martyrs mean trouble for Iran
By Teymoor Nabili in The Middle East Blog

"You have people coming out on to the streets and damaging public property and they get stopped by police."

He said: "Peaceful demonstrations were planned for today [Monday], so I have no idea why these several thousand-at-most people went out and decided to pick a fight.

"But they went out and their first act was to set fire to a bank and then they attacked the Ashoura mourners. Then a fight ensued between the two element and the riot police came in. The riot police were badly beaten and bruised."

Payam Akhavan, who co-founded the Iran Human Rights Documentation Centre, characterised the protests as a result of Iran's disputed June election, which saw Mousavi and others beaten to the presidency by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent.

"The regime has tried to portray the Green [opposition] Movement, the protests, as a very limited segment of Iranian society - middle class, secular students in Tehran," he told Al Jazeera. "But now it's clear that the protests against the regime encompass a very broad cross-section of Iranian society, including devout Muslims."

Outside influences

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at Tehran University, said that the protests were being organised from abroad, a sentiment frequently stressed by the Iranian government.

"They are largely being orchestrated from abroad, they are orchestrated from television networks that are being beamed in from the United States and Europe," Marandi told Al Jazeera.

The protests are some of the worst since those following the disputed presidential poll [EPA]
"The important thing is that initially the protests against Mr Ahamdinejad were more homegrown ... but gradually the pro-American opposition, the opposition supported from outside the country, began to have a greater role."

But Trita Parsi, the president of the advocacy group the National Iranian American Council, rejected that assessment.

"This is a movement that is homegrown, that is finding its inspiration from what is taking place inside the country," he told Al Jazeera.

"There is no evidence or any clear indication that they will be taking any particular orders or money from outside."

Iran's government has been criticised internationally for its clampdown on the protest. In the US, the White House strongly condemned "violent and unjust suppression" of civilians.

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Police clash with Tehran protesters
Montazeri's death sparked clashes between police and opposition supporters last week [Reuters] Iranian police have clashed with thousands of opposition supporters in Tehran during a Shia religious ceremony, witnesses in the Iranian capital said.

Sources told Al Jazeera that nearly 3,000 people had gathered on Saturday in northern Tehran, where Mohammad Khatami, the former president, was expected to deliver a speech.

The event was later cancelled as police fired tear gas and used batons to disperse the crowd.

The confrontation comes as the country marks Ashoura, a 10-day period of Shia religious ceremonies.

The opposition supporters had gathered in an apparent attempt to revive anti-government demonstrations that followed a post-election crackdown in June, the opposition website Jaras said.

Shia ceremony

The same website earlier reported about similar clashes in central Tehran.

The report could not be independently confirmed, as foreign media have been banned from reporting directly on protests.

"A large group of people and security forces clashed in the Pol-e Choubi area while people were marching," Jaras said.

The reported clashes occurred as people around Iran marked the day of Tasoua with religious ceremonies which peak on Sunday, when Shia Muslims commemorate the 7th century death of Hussein, Prophet Muhammad's grandson.

Sadegh Zibakalam, a professor at Tehran University, said the opposition had defied security forces' warnings against using Tasoua as an occasion to stage anti-government demonstrations.

"It appears that the opposition is not something that we can say has disappeared or been reduced. The opposition has used every occasion to register its voice," he told Al Jazeera.

Tension mounting

Six months after a disputed election plunged Iran into political turmoil, tension has again mounted after the death of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a leading dissident religious leader, last week.

Mourning and burial ceremonies for Montazeri, who died aged 87, have sparked bloody confrontations with security forces.

Iranian police clashed on Thursday with Montazeri mourners, making arrests and injuring some, an opposition website said after Tehran warned of a crackdown.

Rehesabz.net said the incident happened in the northern city of Zanjan after authorities reportedly banned most memorial services for Montazeri after his funeral turned into an opposition rally.

"People gathered for Ayatollah Montazeri's memorial were faced with locked mosque doors and decided to hold the ceremony in the street," Rahesabz.net said.

"People were mourning in silence and the Quran was being recited but the police sought to disperse them which led to clashes and people were severely beaten as they were running away.

"Many have been arrested and some of the injured have been taken to hospital."

The report could not be independently verified as foreign media are banned from covering opposition-linked gatherings.

'Person of the year'

In another development that could possibly anger Tehran, a British newspaper on Saturday named an Iranian woman shot dead during protests against her country's disputed June elections as its "person of the year".

The Times said Neda Agha-Soltan became a "global symbol of opposition to tyranny" after images of her bleeding to death during the protests in Tehran were shown around the world.

"Ms Soltan, 26, joined the protest because she was outraged at the way that the regime stole the presidential election," the newspaper said on its front page that included a photograph of protesters holding pictures of her.

"She wanted to make a difference, she said. She had no idea quite what an impact she would have. Mobile phone footage of her bleeding to death on a pavement flashed around the world.

"It tore the last shreds of legitimacy from the regime, made her a global symbol of opposition to tyranny, and inspired the Green movement in a region where populations are all too easily cowed."
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White House condemns "unjust" actions in Iran
WASHINGTON
Sun Dec 27, 2009 3:19pm

Sun, Dec 20 2009WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House condemned on Sunday what it called the "unjust suppression" of civilians by the Iranian government and said the United States was on the side of protesters.

Four people died in Tehran on Sunday when pro-reform protesters clashed with security forces, Iranian state TV said, in the worst outbreak of violence since June's disputed presidential election sparked political turmoil.

"We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights," White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

"Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States," Hammer said.

"Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President (Barack) Obama said in Oslo -- it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation," Hammer said in a reference to Obama's speech this month accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.


Iranian opposition websites said eight people were killed as tens of thousands demonstrated across Iran during the Shi'ite Muslim Tasoua and Ashura festival on December 26-27.

It was the first time people had died in street protests against Iran's clerical leadership since the immediate aftermath of the presidential election in which the opposition says more than 70 people were killed.

The unrest that erupted after that June vote is the biggest in the Islamic state's 30-year history. Authorities deny opposition charges that the voting was rigged.

The turmoil has complicated the international dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which the West believes may have military ends and Iran denies. Tehran has rejected the year-end deadline set by Washington and other world powers to agree to a U.N.-drafted deal to ship most of its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for fuel for a research reactor.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, editing by Will Dunham)