TEHRAN, (Reuters) – Two losing contenders in Iran’s  presidential election denounced the result yesterday in clear  defiance of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s next cabinet would be illegitimate.

Moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and  reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi unleashed fierce attacks on the  outcome of the June 12 vote that returned Ahmadinejad to power  as president for a second term.

Pro-reform ex-president Mohammad Khatami also criticised   the vote and the mass arrests of demonstrators that followed,  declaring in a hard-hitting statement: “Oppressing people will  not help end the protests.”

Although hardliners have appeared to be in the driving seat  since security forces overcame street protests that erupted in  the days after the poll, Mousavi and Karoubi have not yielded.

Both men issued statements on their websites describing  Ahmadinejad’s future government as “illegitimate” — even though  Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s ultimate arbiter, has upheld  the result and thrown his weight behind the president.

“It is our historic responsibility to continue our protests  and not to abandon our efforts to preserve the nation’s rights,”  Mousavi wrote, urging the release of “children of the  revolution” — meaning scores of reformist political figures  rounded up during Iran’s gravest unrest since the shah fell in  1979.

Karoubi, a reformist former parliament speaker who came last  in the poll, also pledged to fight on. “I don’t consider this  government legitimate,” his statement said.

“Visible and invisible forces blocked any change in the  executive power,” he said, demanding the release of the  “thousands” of people he said had been arrested since the poll.

Iran’s police chief, Ismail Ahmadi-Moghaddam, put the total  number of detainees at 1,032 and said most had been freed. The  rest were “referred to the public and revolutionary courts”, the  semi-official Fars news agency quoted him as saying. He said 20  “rioters” had been killed and more than 500 police injured.

A leading reformist party said the election had been a “coup  d’etat” that harmed the legitimacy of the establishment.

“We openly announce that the result is unacceptable,” said a  statement by the Islamic Iran Participation Front, established  by reformers close to Khatami.

In his statement, the former president demanded of the  authorities: “If you want to calm the atmosphere, why are you  carrying out mass arrests?”

Addressing the judiciary, he said: “If these people have  committed crimes, why are their legal rights as citizens not  preserved, why don’t they have access to a lawyer, why are they  not tried in a court, why haven’t they been charged?”

Khatami added: “Obtaining confessions in front of cameras is  a useless old method … confessions under pressure are not  valid.”

Ahmadinejad cancelled a trip to Libya for an African Union  summit that would have given him another chance to burnish his  image at a potentially friendly international forum.