TEHRAN, (Reuters) – Iranian authorities have tightened pressure on their opponents by staging what former president Mohammad Khatami condemned yesterday as a “show trial” of 100 reformists accused of trying to instigate a “velvet revolution”.
The trial was the latest shot in an official campaign to snuff out defiance by those who say Iran’s June 12 election was rigged to ensure the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, due to be sworn in by parliament on Wednesday.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has endorsed the election result and demanded an end to protests, will formally approve the hardline incumbent for a second term today.
Khatami, several of whose close associates were in the dock on Saturday, said the trial violated Iran’s constitution.
“Such show trials will directly harm the system and further damage public trust,” he said on his website (www. khatami.ir). Another court session is scheduled for Thursday.
Defeated election candidate Mirhossein Mousavi dismissed what he said were confessions made under duress. “The torturers and interrogators have gone to such lengths that their victims are among those who gave great services to Iran in the past,” he said on his website Ghalamnews.
“Soon we will see the trials of those who committed these crimes, the torturers and interrogators.”
Iranian officials deny any fraud in the election, in which Ahmadinejad was declared to have won 63 percent of 40 million votes cast, against 34 percent for his nearest rival Mousavi — who says the next government will be illegitimate.
Even some hardliners criticised the trial and the official portrayal of protesters as bent on overthrowing the system.
Emad Afrough, a former pro-Ahmadinejad lawmaker, was quoted by Etemad daily as saying that people who described election protests as a velvet revolution should themselves be tried.
The mass trial of dozens of reformists, including senior officials such as Khatami’s former vice-president, Mohammad Ali Abtahi, paraded in prison dress without his clerical turban, has no precedent in revolutionary Iran’s 30-year history.
Proceedings were closed to all but state media. Many of the defendants had spent weeks in jail without access to lawyers. Some, like Abtahi, appeared to have lost weight and spirit as they assured the court that the election was free and fair.
The defendants were charged with rioting, attacking military and government buildings, having links with armed opposition groups and conspiring against the ruling system, the official IRNA news agency said. Some admitted guilt.
State television showed Abtahi testifying that the vote was valid and apologising for his “misjudgments”. He said Mousavi, Khatami and former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani had taken an oath of mutual support before the vote, IRNA reported.
This was denied by Rafsanjani, an influential cleric and veteran of the 1979 revolution who heads the Assembly of Experts that appoints and can, in theory, dismiss the supreme leader.
Although Revolutionary Guards and Basij militia suppressed huge post-election rallies, opposition leaders remain defiant.
