TEHRAN: Iranian authorities closed down the office of defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi on Tuesday and one of his top aides was detained.
Judiciary officials entered Karoubi’s office in northern Tehran and told him and others inside to leave, ILNA said.
“Karoubi’s office has been sealed off upon the Tehran prosecutor’s order,” it quoted Esmail Gerami-Moghaddam, a spokesman for Karoubi’s party, as saying. Karoubi came fourth in June’s disputed presidential election.
Website mowjcamp.ir said agents raided and searched the home of Morteza Alviri and took him away. It also confirmed the closure of Karoubi’s office.
On Monday security forces raided an office run by allies of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, the election runner-up, and confiscated documents, his website said.
Mousavi’s website said it was the premises of a committee set up by him to look into postelection events, including the number of dead and the treatment of people detained during the huge opposition demonstrations that followed the vote.
Karoubi, whose newspaper was closed down three weeks ago, angered hard-liners last month by saying some imprisoned protesters were raped and abused in jail.
The authorities have rejected the allegation as baseless but the judiciary and Parliament have agreed to look into the issue. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of Tehran’s Kahrizak detention center in July after reports of abuse there and the semiofficial Mehr News Agency on Monday said a trial of people involved would start in coming days.
Karoubi said on his party’s website this week he had handed over films and other material about abuse of three detainees to a special investigative parliamentary committee.
