Last month, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the Iranian nation is witnessing the echo of its voice in other parts of the Muslim world.
That the revolutions have been secular in nature was not deemed relevant by the regime’s luminaries. They looked forward to a new Middle East, characterized by waning US and Israeli influence.
The Iranian opposition Green Movement, led by Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi, seized the opportunity afforded by the uprisings and the regime’s purported support of them to call for a mass demonstration to express solidarity with the people’s movement in the region against their oppressive regimes, they wrote.
The Iranian government, arguing that this would be a political act, refused to authorize the demonstration even though it was called to support developments in the Arab world that it itself had encouraged…
The contradictions and hypocrisy of the regime were clearly exposed, which may also have been one of the objectives of Karroubi and Mousavi.
Despite the ban, Iranians took to the streets nevertheless, on February 14, notably in Tehran, where they converged on Enghelab and Azadi Square…
Two demonstrators were killed in clashes with the security forces.
Both Karroubi and Mousavi were prevented from attending and placed under house arrest.
The following day, 50 or so member of the Majlis, Iran’s parliament, shouted Death to Mousavi, death to Karroubi inside the chamber.
Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi are corrupts on earth and should be tried, others told the official IRNA news agency. The death penalty usually follows a conviction on such charges in the Islamic Republic…
Since their house arrest on February 14, nothing has been heard from them…
The two are currently in their home. There have only been some limitations on their contacts with suspicious elements, a justice ministry official told the Fars news agency last Monday.
Iran’s Prosecutor General, Gholam Hossein Moshseni Ejei, was more explicit.
Judicial action has been taken (against them), ultimatums have been issued. In the first step, their communications, including their comings and goings, and their telephone conversations have been restricted, and if need be, other steps will be taken, he warned last Monday as well.
Interestingly, four days later, Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s Foreign Minister, in an interview with Euronews, claimed that those gentlemen you refer to are in their homes, they are living ordinary lives…To the best of my knowledge, they are at their homes. They are always moving from one place to another. They are free to visit their families. They may have made their own decision to move.
He thus implicitly stated that they were no longer in their homes nor under house arrest.
Yet, if that is so, why has no one seen them?
We, like any other children that suddenly have been cut off from communicating with their parents, are highly concerned. We live in an absolute news blackout about our loved ones. It is clear to us that our loved ones are held by those who hate them only because of their ideals. We are concerned because we read that our parents have not been imprisoned, and are not under house arrest, but are only escorted by security agents, and that we, their children, can see them. But it has not been that way. We the children have not seen our parents, have not heard their voices, and what concerns us most is the contradiction between what the regime says and what is actually taking place, Mousavi’s three daughters declared in a statement quoted by tehranbureau last Thursday.
Opposition activists claim that the two men, along with their wives, Zahra Rahnavard and Fatemeh Karroubi, have been arrested and imprisoned.
It has been more than two weeks that Iranian authorities have put Mousavi and Karroubi in a situation such that no one has any reliable information about their conditions and health. There have been many speculations. For us, after we investigated, the report about the transfer of Mousavi and Karroubi and their wives to Heshmateiyeh (a Tehran jail) is considered credible, Amir Arjomand, a senior Mousavi advisor, told RFE/RL’s Radio Farda.
According to some sources, Vahid Haghanian, the Supreme Leader’s own deputy chief of staff, arrested Mr. and Mrs. Karroubi.
The fact that they are being held incommunicado is not a good sign.
Arbitrary and incommunicado detention in unknown locations is often associated with torture and ill treatment, even extrajudicial execution in Iran. Time and again opposition figures in Iran are detained without contact with their families or lawyers, only to undergo abuse and appear on TV weeks later confessing to baseless charges, Hadi Ghaemi, a spokesperson for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, declared.
The precedents are numerous and alarming…
Given the current context of uprisings throughout the Arab world, has the regime finally opted to do away with the opposition’s most prominent leaders in hopes of crushing it, even if it means flouting its own laws, let alone international law?
As such, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH in French) and the Iranian League for the Defense of Human Rights officially seized the United Nations Working Group for Involuntary Disappearances.
The houses of four opposition leaders have been surrounded by the security forces and all their contacts were under scrutiny for months. Now they have disappeared. Their case constitutes a clear application of enforced or involuntary disappearance. The Iranian authorities are responsible for their safety, Dr. Karim Lahiditi, vice president of the FIDH, announced.
Where are Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hossein Mousavi?
We must insist that the thugs who rule in Tehran answer that question, and answer it now…
The events in Libya and elsewhere should not lead us to neglect their fate, or encourage the Iranian despots to believe that no one is currently concerned with their wellbeing…
(the photograph of Karroubi and Mousavi was found here)
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