Tehran, August 09: With hundreds of opposition activists and protestors put in the dock in Iran, a powerful bloc in the parliament moves to lodge a complaint against leading opposition figure Mir-Hossein Mousavi.
The influential clerics’ bloc in Iran’s parliament along with a number of other Majlis representatives have implicated Mousavi as the driving force behind the recent turmoil which swept across the country.
Iran’s capital witnessed widespread protests as supporters of presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi took to the streets after the defeated candidates rejected the official result of the June 12 election as “fraudulent”.
Meanwhile, Iran’s Guardian Council, the body responsible for overseeing the election, has disputed all allegations against the validity of the vote.
Reacting to the recently-created situation in the country, member of the National Security Commission in the parliament Mohammad Karami-Rad said on Sunday that the Majlis officials had been working on a complaint against Mousavi.
He added that while Iran’s judiciary is yet to receive the formal complaint, the plaintiffs are determined in their decision to pursue the case and bring to justice the “rioters.”
“We are pursuing the complaint against Mousavi and soon this letter of complaint will be handed to the judiciary so that the legal proceeding is conducted [on the matter] and the rioters are brought to justice,” the National Security official told Iran’s Journalists Club.
The Majlis lawmakers’ move to take Mousavi to court comes as more than 100 opposition figures and protestors were paraded in front of cameras a week ago, confessing to attempting a “velvet coup” against the Islamic Republic.
Last Saturday’s mass trial was followed by dozens more who stood in the dock this Saturday — among them were the British Embassy’s chief political analyst, Hossein Rassam, a local staff member of the French Embassy, Nazak Ashfar, and a 24-year-old French teacher, Clotilde Reisse, who was working and studying in Isfahan.
Earlier last week, Tehran Representative in Majlis Hamid Rasayi said the mass trial of opposition figures, protesters and journalists had paved the way for action against the “real riot leaders”.
In separate remarks on Tuesday, Javad Karimi-Qoddousi, a member of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Commission, said that former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who has expressed his disbelief and opposition at the election result as well as the trial, should be banned from leaving the country until further notice.
Amid increasing calls by the ruling system to mount pressure on Iran’s opposition, a member of the minority bloc in Parliament, Ali-Akbar Oliya, was quoted by the Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) as saying that such pleas are of “pure propagandist nature.”
Oliya went on to say that the prospects of any trial of influential figures and opposition leaders were “rumors” floated by “hardliners”.
“Instead of spreading such rumors, we need to work to restore law and security to the nation,” the parliamentarian added.
The former prime-minister has said that detentions and threats would never halt the opposition movement, vowing to continue protesting the election results.
—–Agencies