Tehran, July 17: Iranians are bracing for a tense political encounter today as the opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi makes his first official public appearance in weeks at Friday prayers at Tehran University.
The reformist’s overwhelming defeat in last month’s election to the hardliner incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked the biggest upheaval in Iran since the 1979 revolution, leading to a vicious crackdown by the security forces, the arrest and detention of hundreds of leading activists, journalists and academics. The official death toll from the upheaval stands at 20 but human rights groups believe hundreds may have died.
–Agencies