TEHRAN, June 14: Iranian authorities denied Saturday that an anti-regime protester has been killed in clashes in Shiraz, southern Iran, as reports emerged that demonstrations have spread from the Iranian capital to other cities.
The student news agency ISNA had quoted an unnamed MP from Shiraz as saying that one protester involved in clashes there late Friday was “probably dead” after being beaten about the head with an iron bar by members of the pro-regime Ansar Hezbollah vigilante group.
But the student news agency also quoted a provincial official, who was also not named, as denying any fatalities in Shiraz, or indeed any clashes whatsoever.
ISNA said there were also protests in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, with crowds shouting slogans of support for demonstrators in the capital. But the agency said Ansar Hezbollah also intervened there to smash the gathering.
VIGILANTES: Hardline vigilantes used clubs and iron bars around a Tehran university campus overnight on Friday to disperse thousands of anti-regime protesters, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
The area surrounding the dormitories remained sealed off in the early hours of Saturday by hundreds of police. However thousands of cars full of residents hoping to join the protests managed to approach the facility through back streets.
TWO ARRESTED: Two leading members of Iran’s liberal opposition, critical of certain facets of the regime, were arrested on Saturday in a judicial crackdown following four nights of anti-regime protests, the student news agency ISNA reported.
The agency said Taghi Rahmani and Reza Alidjani, both members of a group called the Religious Nationalist Alliance, were detained on the order of Tehran’s chief prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi on charges of having secret contacts with students.
A third member of the liberal group, Hoda Saber, was also ordered detained but was not at home when police went to arrest him, ISNA said, although the Fars news agency — which is linked to the judiciary — said he was also detained.
The three have been accused of taking part in a secret meeting to plan the current wave of student-led unrest which has hit the area around Tehran university for the past four nights.
The protests have been increasingly virulent, with demonstrators shouting slogans targeting Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Taghi Rahmani, a prominent leftist, was in May sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for trying to overthrow the present regime, while Reza Alidjani received a six-year jail term and Hoda Saber nine years.
But the three — all activists who have questioned the foundations of Iran’s nearly 25-year-old clerical regime — had been free pending an appeal to their sentences.
FARSI WEBSITE: The United States is looking into funding projects that would set up Farsi-language websites to promote “democratic change” in Iran, a senior State Department official said on Friday.
The official said the programme being considered would be a part of President George W. Bush’s Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) which is aimed at promoting good governance and free market economies in the region.—AFP