An Iranian prosecutor called on Tuesday for "maximum punishment" of a senior reformer for acting against national security, a crime punishable by death, in the fourth mass trial of moderates after the disputed election. Saeed Hajjarian, disabled after an assassination attempt against him in 2000, was among several prominent opposition figures in the dock charged with fomenting the huge street protests that followed the June poll.
The vote plunged Iran into its most serious internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposing deep divisions in its ruling elite and further straining ties with the West. "The prosecutor ... called for maximum punishment for Hajjarian considering the importance of the case," the official IRNA news agency reported. Analysts regard the trials as an attempt by the authorities to uproot the moderate opposition and put an end to protests that erupted after the election, which defeated candidates say was rigged in favour of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Several of the accused are members of Iran's leading reformist party, Mosharekat, whose website denounced the latest Revolutionary Court session as another show trial forming part of what it called an "ugly scenario". It said some 200 relatives of those on trial gathered outside the court and that police failed to disperse them.
At the same trial in Tehran, the state broadcaster said Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh was accused of acting against national security and of espionage, a charge likely to anger Washington. Those on trial also included former Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh and business newspaper editor Saeed Laylaz, an outspoken critic of Ahmadinejad's economic policies.
Some, such as former Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh and former government spokesman Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, had appeared also at an earlier trial session. IRNA said the accused were "the plotters of recent riots and disturbances" after the vote, which the authorities have portrayed as a foreign-backed bid to topple the Islamic Republic's clerical leadership.
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