TEHRAN: The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said her 62-year-old brother was among those detained after last month’s disputed election in what she called a futile attempt to pressure her husband and herself.
Zahra Rahnavard’s comments, in an interview published by a pro-reform Iranian news agency on Thursday, were the latest in a series of defiant statements by Mousavi and his allies, who insist the June 12 presidential election was rigged.
Hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the declared winner, denies this, as does Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The election has plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 revolution, with hundreds of thousands of Mousavi supporters taking to the streets last month, and exposed deepening divisions in its ruling elite.
Rahnavard, a prominent artist and academic who broke ground in the conservative Islamic state by campaigning for her husband in the election, told ILNA news agency that her brother, Shahpour Kazemi, was detained more than a month ago.
Rights groups say hundreds of people, including senior pro-reform activists, journalists, academics and lawyers, were arrested during a post-election crackdown on the opposition. The authorities say most of those held have been released.
Rahnavard said she and other Iranians would not believe any “confessions by force” obtained from her brother.
“Those who make (such legal) cases should know that by continuing such actions ... the nation will abandon them, and putting pressure on Mousavi and me will not work,” she said.
