Iran has no political prisoners, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared in an interview with CNN, according to excerpts published by his office Saturday. "There is no one in Iran (jailed) as a political prisoner," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling CNN in comments translated from Farsi, the presidency website said.
"Some people who were arrested after the (2009 presidential) election were not detained because of any complaint from the government," Ahmadinejad said in answer to a question about a wave of unrest and arrests that followed his disputed re-election. "The judiciary is independent from the government and it is not influenced by the government, and even in some cases the judiciary is opposed to the views of the head of the executive branch," he added.
Dozens of people were killed in the post-election disturbances, which were met with a government crackdown, and a number of Iranian students, political activists and journalists have been handed hefty jail sentences in the past two years on charges related to the protests. Two former politicians - ex-parliamentary speaker Mehdi Karroubi and ex-premier Mir Hossein Mousavi - remain under house arrest after alleging the election was rigged and calling for protests.
In August, the Islamic republic's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pardoned 100 prisoners convicted of "security-related crimes" in connection with anti-regime demonstrations. Ahmadinejad's full CNN interview was to be broadcast on Sunday, according to the US news network.
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