TEHRAN: Former President Mohammad Khatami said on Wednesday trial confessions by moderates accused of fomenting post-election unrest were made under “extraordinary conditions” and were invalid, an Iranian news agency reported.
At Tuesday’s trial, the fourth since June polls denounced by moderates as fraudulent, senior reformer and Khatami ally Saeed Hajjarian was reported as saying he had “made major mistakes during the election by presenting incorrect analyses.”
“I apologize to the Iranian nation for those mistakes.”
A prosecutor demanded maximum punishment for Hajjarian who is accused of acting against national security, a crime which can carry the death sentence. “These confessions are invalid and have been obtained under extraordinary conditions ... such claims are sheer lies and false,” Khatami, who backed the main moderate candidate in the election, was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency.
Also in the dock on Tuesday were several other moderate figures, including former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh — both of whom held their positions under Khatami.
All were charged with fomenting huge street protests that followed the June presidential election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; some confessed to “mistakes.”
Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh was also accused of acting against national security and espionage at Tuesday’s trial, charges likely to anger Washington.
Tajbakhsh also told the court that Khatami had met with billionaire financier George Soros in New York, Iranian media reported, but Khatami said this was also a “lie.” Iranian officials have portrayed the post-election protests as a foreign-backed bid to topple the clerical establishment.
The June 12 vote has plunged Iran into its most serious internal crisis since the 1979 revolution and has exposed deep divisions in the establishment’s ruling elite. Defeated moderate candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi say the vote was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad’s re-election, a charge the authorities deny.
Analysts see the mass trials as an attempt to uproot the moderate opposition and put an end to opposition protests.
Rights groups say hundreds of people, including senior pro-reform politicians, journalists and activists, have been detained since the election. Many are still in jail.
Moderate politicians and influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a rival of Ahmadinejad, have called for the detainees’ immediate release.
One of those in the dock in Tuesday’s trial accused Rafsanjani’s son of encouraging moderates to allege that the poll was rigged. Mehdi Hashemi Rafsanjani denied the claims.
In a televised debate before the election, Ahmadinejad accused Rafsanjani’s family of corruption. The official IRNA news agency said on Wednesday Rafsanjani’s family had issued a complaint to the judiciary against Ahmadinejad, but it did not give details.
Karoubi has also angered hard-liners by claiming some imprisoned protesters were raped and abused in jail, a charge government officials have rejected as “baseless.”
But a parliamentary committee set up to investigate the cases of detainees said it would be ready to consider any evidence submitted by the pro-reform cleric.
