TEHRAN: Huge crowds of Iranians turned out for the funeral of leading dissident leader Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri in Qom on Monday and some chanted anti-government slogans, websites reported.
Montazeri, who died late on Saturday aged 87, was viewed as the spiritual patron of a pro-reform opposition movement that blossomed after a disputed presidential election in June and has proved resilient despite repeated efforts to suppress it.
Violence flared when security forces around Montazeri’s house clashed with stone-throwing protesters, the reformist website Norooz said. There was no immediate official comment.
The report could not be verified independently since foreign media were banned from reporting directly on protests and were told not to travel to Qom for Montazeri’s funeral. However, pictures obtained by Reuters showed scuffles apparently between government and opposition supporters.
The reformist website Jaras said hundreds of thousands of people joined a procession for Montazeri, a pillar of Iran’s 1979 revolution. He later became a fierce critic of its hard-line leadership and a staunch defender of reformists.
“Innocent Montazeri, your path will be continued even if the dictator should rain bullets on our heads,” the crowd chanted. Iran’s internal unrest, highlighted by Montazeri’s arguments that the leadership had lost its legitimacy, has complicated the dispute over the Iranian nuclear program, which the West believes may have military ends, not just civilian purposes.
Opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi were photographed paying their condolences at Montazeri’s house.
Reformist websites said security forces arrested some opposition supporters trying to reach Qom and turned others away.
The cleric’s death occurred in the tense run-up to Ashura, a politically laden Shiite religious commemoration that offers the opposition another opportunity to show its strength. Shouts of “Oh Hossein, Mirhossein” also rose from mourners near Iran’s second holiest shrine, many wearing green wristbands to show support for Mousavi.
Their cries echoed traditional Ashura laments for Hossein, a grandson of the Prophet Mohammad, killed in a 7th-century battle that sealed the schism between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
Ashura, a key occasion in the Islamic Republic’s calendar, will coincide with the seventh day of mourning for Montazeri, making it harder for authorities to keep people off the streets.
Riot police were out in force in Qom, 125 km south of Tehran, for the funeral of the senior Shiite cleric who had been a thorn in the establishment’s side.
