TEHRAN: A key pro-reform political party blamed Iran’s president and interior minister Wednesday for the abuse and death of protesters detained after the disputed presidential election at a facility the group likened to Iraq’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison.

Reformists have seized on the mistreatment of detainees at Kahrizak prison as a way to keep pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who they claim stole the June 12 election through massive fraud. Influential conservatives have also criticized the abuse at Kahrizak and the three deaths known to have taken place there.

Senior police and judiciary officials have tried to calm public outrage by acknowledging that some detainees were abused in prison and calling for those responsible to be punished.

The Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organization said Wednesday that Ahmadinejad and Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli were to blame for the “crimes committed at Abu Ghraib Kahrizak.”

“These two people are responsible for all violations, illegal behavior and appalling treatment of detainees at Kahrizak prison,” the reformist party said in a statement posted on its website.

Opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said on Wednesday that the condition of the country’s prisons showed that Iran needed a “deep change,” his website reported.

“What happens in Iran’s prisons these days clearly shows the necessity of a deep change in the country,” the Ghalamnews quoted Mousavi as saying. “Could America harm Iran... as much as these events in prisons have damaged the (1979 Islamic) revolution and the country?” he asked.

Iran’s parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, sought to defuse some of the controversy Wednesday by denying allegations made by a defeated reformist presidential candidate that protesters detained at Kahrizak were raped by their jailers.

“The issue of detainees being sexually abused is a lie,” Larijani told an open session of parliament, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA.

Mahdi Karroubi said Sunday he has received reports from former military commanders and other senior officials that male and female prisoners were savagely raped by their jailers to the point of physical and mental damage.

Larijani’s swift denial is likely an effort by hard-liners to minimize fallout from the allegations.

The government is holding a trial for some 100 politicians, journalists and activists who have been accused of involvement in an alleged “velvet revolution” to overthrow the Islamic leadership. The opposition has called the trial a sham.

One of those on trial is Clotilde Reiss, a French academic who President Nicolas Sarkozy has urged Iran to release.

French government spokesman Luc Chatel said Wednesday that France expects Reiss to be freed on bail.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted an “informed political source” as saying the French Embassy in Tehran sent a note to the judiciary agreeing to deposit bail in order to win Reiss’ freedom.

A day earlier, France thanked Syria, Iran’s closest Arab ally, among countries that had “provided their support” to help free Nazak Afshar, a local French Embassy employee who still faces trial.

Afshar’s release was “a joint Iranian and Syria message” to the West about readiness to improve ties, said Edmond Saab, executive editor of An-Nahar newspaper in Lebanon, where developments in Syria are closely watched.