TEHRAN: A top Iranian reformist who went on trial in a Tehran court with about 100 others on charges of rioting backed down Saturday from claims of massive vote rigging in the June presidential vote.
Former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, giving testimony in a revolutionary court, said there had been no fraud in the June 12 election, which returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office for another four years, the Fars news agency reported.
The retraction by Abtahi, a close aide to reformist ex-President Mohammad Khatami, deals a blow to the opposition that claims that Ahmadinejad’s re-election was fraudulent.
“I say to all my friends and all friends who hear us that the issue of fraud in Iran was a lie and was brought up to create riots so Iran becomes like Afghanistan and Iraq and suffers damage and hardship,” Fars quoted Abtahi as telling the court.
He said reformists and opposition leaders had betrayed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The re-election of Ahmadinejad has triggered the worst crisis in Iran since the revolution in 1979. Around 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the postelection violence when hundreds of thousands of anti-Ahmadinejad protesters took to the streets to denounce his victory.
Up to 2,000 protesters, political activists, reformists and journalists were arrested as they publicly challenged the election results. Most were later released, but around 250 remain behind bars.
Prominent among the others who went on trial Saturday were former government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, former Vice Speaker of Parliament Behzad Nabavi, former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh and leader of the biggest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front, Mohsen Mirdamadi.
The defendants faced charges that include attacking military and government buildings, having links with armed opposition groups and conspiring against the ruling system, Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, reported.
Fars said the accused, if proven guilty, could face a maximum jail term of five years, unless they are charged with being a “mohareb” or enemy of God, which can carry the death penalty.
During the session, prosecutors read out an indictment outlining what they said was a years-long plot by the top pro-reform political parties to carry out a “velvet revolution,” a popular, nonviolent uprising to overthrow the government similar to ones that have occurred in Eastern Europe.
The prosecutor said three of the biggest opposition parties had taken money from foreign nongovernmental organizations and had sought to use the election controversy as an opportunity to carry out their plot.
Abtahi said that he “agreed” with the prosecution charges. “It was wrong of me to take part in the rallies, but (Mehdi) Karoubi told me that we cannot call the people onto the streets with such a meager number of votes, so we had better go to the streets ourselves to demonstrate our protest,” he said.
Karoubi, a reformist ex-Parliament speaker, won just 333,635 votes or 0.85 percent in the presidential ballot. Abtahi was one of his advisers during the election.
Karoubi and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi are spearheading the massive anti-Ahmadinejad campaign.
During his testimony, Abtahi said Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani, a former president, had taken an “oath” not to abandon each other. “Mousavi probably did not know the country, but Khatami, with all due respect ... knew all the issues. He was aware of the capability and power of the leader, but he joined Mousavi and this was a betrayal,” Abtahi said, adding that Rafsanjani sought to avenge his 2005 presidential defeat to Ahmadinejad.
The Expediency Council, which is headed by Rafsanjani, denied Abtahi’s allegations, in a statement carried by IRNA. “The Expediency Council branded as a lie a statement made by Abtahi in court that Mousavi, Khatami and Rafsanjani swore to support each other,” IRNA said. “Ayatollah Rafsanjani did not support any candidate in this election and did not have the slightest role in postelection incidents,” the statement added.
Another accused, Mohammad Atrianfar, also expressed his loyalty to the regime during his testimony.
The reformist website www.mowjcamp.com denounced Saturday’s trial and said defendants had no access to lawyers and there was no jury. “Do those who organized this show trial today think that the nation will remain silent to slaughter the nation’s best?”
A reformist lawyer, Mohammad Reza Tabesh, quoted Abtahi’s wife as saying that the former vice president had lost 40 pounds, or 18 kilograms, of weight after 43 days in custody.
There was no information on when the trial would end or when a verdict could be expected.
On his website, Mousavi meanwhile denied in a statement that his campaign against the re-election of Ahmadinejad has foreign links. “Despite the claims made by our opponents, this movement to seek our right has nothing to with foreigners. It is completely a domestic movement,” Mousavi said on the website, Ghalam News.
