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Leaders of Iran's main opposition group arrested

By Afshin Valinejad, Associated Press, 4/8/2001 18:28

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) Forty members of Iran's main opposition group have been arrested, media reports said Sunday, the latest crackdown by Islamic hard-liners who appear to be trying to clear the field ahead of the June presidential election.

The action against the outlawed Freedom Movement's top leadership was immediately condemned by the largest party backing reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The Islamic Iran Participation Front called on Iranians ''to turn out in large numbers in the presidential election to exercise their rights and say 'no' to actions incompatible with freedom, justice and the rule of law.''

The upcoming election could determine the course of a popular reform movement that began after Khatami's election in 1997. Khatami has not said if he will run for another four-year term. Most Iranians favor the political and social freedoms he has championed. But hard-liners, who control the judiciary and security forces, have either barred nearly all his closest associates from politics or arrested them.

Ali Mobasheri, head of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, said 42 people were arrested and that some were linked to the Mujahedeen Khalq, an Iraq-based opposition group. He did not say how many were from the Freedom Movement.

In comments reported on Tehran radio, Mobasheri denied that the arrests were linked to the presidential elections, saying the court was simply carrying out its duty ''to confront those who are trying to overthrow the establishment.''

But the reform-minded Khatami expressed his regret over the recent wave of arrests.

''Such measures are not in the interest of the political system and people,'' he said in a speech reported by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency. ''No threat is more serious to our popular system than a situation in which the rulers of the country cannot justify their conduct to the people.''

Khatami said those who break laws should be dealt with ''but if anybody ... (is) oppressed, it is regrettable.''

The Iranian Students News Agency reported that 40 Freedom Movement members were arrested late Saturday, and newspapers reported that the group's offices had been closed nationwide. The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted a Revolutionary Court statement as saying that the detainees were charged with seeking to ''overthrow the Islamic establishment.''

The Freedom Movement, once tolerated by Iran's ruling Islamic establishment, is reviled by hard-liners, who do not call it by name.

Relatives of 10 members, contacted by telephone Sunday, confirmed six arrests in Tehran, two in Isfahan in central Iran, and two in the city of Zanjan in the northwest.

The daughter of one arrested member said her family was worried about the health of her aged, ailing father.

''My father is 84 and has some heart problems,'' said Nilufar Sadr Hajseidjavadi. ''They searched our house from afternoon till almost midnight, then took my father. We begged them to let him sleep at home and then take him the next morning, but they refused,'' she told The Associated Press by telephone.

Zahra Tavassoli, the daughter of another Freedom Movement member, said agents searched their home and then took her father along with his papers, books, and computer discs.

The daily Aftab-e-Yazd said Sunday that liberal dissident Fazlollah Salavati, editor of the banned Navid-e-Isfahan paper, has also been arrested in Isfahan. He was close to the Freedom Movement but was not a member.

Last month, the Revolutionary Court banned the Freedom Movement on charges it was seeking to overthrow the Islamic establishment. Twenty-one of its members were arrested on orders of the hard-line judiciary; several later were freed. Four pro-democracy newspapers also were banned, raising the number of publications closed in a year to about 36.

The liberal dissidents who support Khatami's reform program have denied the charges against the Freedom Movement, saying the suppressive measures were aimed at further undermining reforms ahead of the election.

Among those arrested Saturday were Mohammad Tavassoli, Hashem Sabbaqian, Ahmad Sadr Hajseidjavadi, Abolfazl Bazargan and Mohammad-Hossein Baniassadi, according to their family members. All five are senior members of the group. Its leader, Ebrahim Yazdi, was in the United States during the first wave of arrests and has not returned to Iran.

Bazargan is the nephew and Baniassadi the son-in-law of the late Mehdi Bazargan, who founded the Freedom Movement in 1961 and was briefly prime minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001