Tehran, July 17: Defiant supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi staged fresh demonstrations in Tehran Friday, witnesses said, after a powerful cleric called for the release of detainees held in a post-election crackdown.
Thousands of Mousavi supporters, shouting “Ya Hossein, Mir Hossein!” and “Allahu Akbar” (God is Greatest) demonstrated at various locations around Tehran university where Friday prayers were led by Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
The demonstrations were held in defiance of a ban on such gatherings ordered by the Iranian authorities in the wake of deadly unrest sparked by the disputed June 12 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Witnesses said riot police and Islamist vigilantes were deployed on various streets near the university to prevent the demonstrations, but protesters managed to evade them to stage brief gatherings.
Witnesses said several people had been arrested and that police had fired rubber bullets to disperse some crowds.
They said thousands of people, many wearing green bands indicating support for Mousavi, converged on the area surrounding Tehran university, among them scores of families with children.
Women dressed in chadors were seen holding up their hands and flashing the victory sign while others carried posters of Mousavi.
One witness said policemen smashed the windowpanes of several cars whose drivers were sounding their horns, a regular tactic adopted by protesters.
The post-election anti-Ahmadinejad protests held last month set off the worst crisis in the Islamic republic since the 1979 revolution.
The ensuing violence left at least 20 people dead, many scores wounded and hundreds arrested, according to official figures.
Friday’s weekly prayers offered a new opportunity for opposition supporters to stage demonstrations. They last took the streets in numbers on July 9 to stage a march to commemorate the anniversary of bloody student unrest in 1999.
Mousavi has charged that the June vote was rigged and that he in fact had won the contest. He has dismissed the next government as “illegitimate.”
Rafsanjani said events since the election had broken the trust of Iranians which now needed to be restored.
“What should we do?” Rafsanjani asked in his first public comments on the divisive election. “Our key issue is to return the trust which the people had and now to some extent is broken.
“It is not necessary that in this situation people be jailed. Let them join their families. We should not allow enemies to rebuke and ridicule us because of detentions. We should tolerate each other,” said Rafsanjani, a backer of the defiant opposition, especially Mousavi.
He said he had formulated a possible solution to the situation which he had discussed with members of two key institutions which he heads, the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts.
“A large group of … people of the country say they have doubt” about the result of the election, the cleric said. “We should work to address these doubts.
“These are bitter times. I don’t think anybody from any faction wanted it to end like this. We have all lost. We need unity more than ever,” he added.
“If we can provide a consensus, then this sermon will be the beginning of a change in the future. We will leave behind this problem which we can say is a crisis.”
During his sermon, Rafsanjani, who himself lost out to Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential race, did not comment directly on the hardline leader.
Rafsanjani had come under attack from Ahmadinejad during a prime-time television debate in the run-up to the vote, with the hardline incumbent accusing Rafsanjani’s family of corruption.
Mousavi had been expected to attend the Friday prayers which would have marked his first public appearance since his supporters last month staged the anti-Ahmadinejad protests in Tehran.
However, witnesses said they could not confirm Mousavi’s attendance.
The foreign media was banned from covering the prayers.
–Agencies