November 23, 2002	Saturday	Ramazan 17, 1423

TEHRAN, Nov 22: Dozens of people were arrested and several hurt in clashes in three Iranian cities on Friday when the anniversary of a dissident’s murder added impetus to the largest pro-reform protests for three years.

At least a dozen people, some of them local journalists, were arrested and several punched and kicked by hardline militiamen in Tehran as about 5,000 people started chanting “Political prisoners must be freed”, witnesses said.

In the northeastern city of Mashhad, 60 people were arrested at a pro-reform rally and another 25 were detained in the southern city Shiraz, the ISNA students news agency reported.

The demonstrations followed two weeks of almost daily student protests for free speech and political reform.

The large Tehran gathering in honour of Dariush Forouhar — a nationalist stabbed to death at home along with his wife in 1998 by rogue intelligence ministry agents — was the first reformist rally in the last two weeks not led by students. It was also the first to be forcibly broken up by security forces.

Khatami, who has threatened to resign if conservatives keep blocking his reform agenda, is pushing for legislation giving him greater authority to run the country of 65 million people.

Iran’s hardliners run the judiciary, armed forces and unelected state bodies that can veto legislation and election candidates.

At the memorial service for Forouhar at a mosque in southern Tehran, crowds of people of mixed ages and backgrounds defied police orders to disperse and began chanting reformist slogans.

Many said they had heeded calls to show up broadcast by US-based Iranian satellite television stations.

KICKS AND PUNCHES: Plainclothes police and hardline militiamen mingled with the crowd, occasionally lashing out with punches, kicks and baton blows at young men who led the chants, witnesses said.

“I’m afraid but at the same time we’re tired of these pressures,” said one middle-aged woman, who gave her first name as Mina. “We came here for the freedom of the country.”

Later, as the crowds tried to follow Forouhar’s family to their nearby home, a line of riot police blocked their path. They fired at least three tear gas canisters and made several baton charges into the crowd, which then dispersed.

“The people have the right to demand the release of the political prisoners,” said Hossein Ansari Rad, one of several reformist politicians who attended the service.

Dozens of reformists, including students and journalists, have been jailed by hardline courts in the past three years, convicted of crimes against Iran’s Islamic political system.

Students have staged two weeks of largely peaceful rallies and class boycotts in support of reformist academic Hashem Aghajari, sentenced to hang for questioning conservatives’ right to rule.

But the pro-reform protesters were vastly outnumbered by the tens of thousands of faithful at Friday prayers in Tehran University, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said pro-US enemies of the state were behind the student protests.

“Everyone knows who the enemy is. Today the enemy of the nation and the government and the system and of our country’s independence and freedom is the arrogant American government,” said Khamenei, Iran’s most powerful figure.

Worshippers, who packed the university and clogged surrounding streets where Khamenei’s words were broadcast over loudspeakers, responded with chants of “Death to America” and “Our leader, we are ready”.—Reuters