Iran prosecutor urges ’strong action’ against detained protesters

Iran prosecutor urges no leniency for detainees

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s top prosecutor has ordered his representative in Tehran not to show any leniency to detained opposition protesters, according to a statement posted Monday on a judicial Web site.

“Strong action must be taken against seditionist elements,” General prosecutor Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi said in the statement, addressing Tehran chief prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi.

The statement was referring to opposition protests last month in which at least eight protesters were killed and more than 500 arrested in the worst violence since the height of the unrest in the summer.

Monday’s statement follows a call made recently by hard-liners for the execution of opposition leaders.

The opposition claims that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected through massive vote fraud and that its leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was the true winner of the June election.

In a separate development, Iranian opposition leader Mahdi Karroubi said a recent attack on his car would not force him to abandon his political activism, according to his Web site, Sahamnews.

“I announce that the ever increasing threats … have not only failed to weaken me, but also made me more firm,” he said on his Web site.

Pro-government demonstrators Friday opened fire on Karroubi’s car, but he escaped unharmed.

Karroubi blamed authorities for the incident, during which the gunfire appeared to come from the direction of a crowd of some 500 government supporters in Qazvin, a town some 90 miles (140 kilometers) west of Tehran.

The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is close to hard-liners, said the local police chief, Masoud Jafari Nasab, denied that anyone fired on Karroubi’s car

Karroubi said he and his children were ready to face any difficulty for the sake of their political convictions. Karroubi does not travel in Tehran or elsewhere without his two sons, Hossein and Taghi.

Also on his site, Karroubi launched a scathing attack on authorities, saying they were responsible for allowing the 1979 Islamic revolution to “deviate” from its true path.

The government, he said, responds with insults to any suggestion to resolve the political crisis that has arisen from the disputed June elections and the massive opposition protests that immediately followed.

“It seems some officials are not only not interested in peace but also find their bread in the crisis, chaos and repression.”