Iran's progressive Islamic Participation Front yesterday condemned the detention on Saturday of 40 members of the Freedom Movement, the leading opposition grouping.
The Participation Front, the largest parliamentary party and mainstay of the reformist President, Mr Muhammad Khatami, said the arrests were intended to discourage popular participation in politics and to flout the "will of the people".
The front urged the electorate to say "no" to conservatives, who have blocked Mr Khatami's political and economic reform programme, and called for a heavy turnout in June's presidential poll which Mr Khatami is expected to win if he decides to stand for re-election.
The Tehran Revolutionary Court accused the detained members of the banned religious-nationalist Freedom Movement of "creating troubles and tensions in society and co-operating with the exiled opposition". Mr Ali Mobasheri, head of the hard-line conservative court, said that the new arrests were made on the basis of "confessions" extracted from a dozen of the movement's members held incommunicado since mid-March. They have been accused of conspiring to overthrow the Islamic regime, a charge which could carry the death penalty.
The latest detainees include Mr Abolfazl Bazargan, a nephew of Mr Mehdi Bazargan who founded the movement in the late 1970s and was appointed interim prime minister in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini until he returned to Tehran from exile in Paris.
Mr Hashem Sabaqquian, a former interior minister, Mr Muhammad Tavasoli, a former mayor of Tehran, and Mr Ah mad Sadr Haj-seyyed Javadi, an ailing 84-year-old, were also arrested. The current leader of the movement, Mr Ibrahim Yazdi, who served as foreign minister, is abroad. Influential figures from other cities were rounded up and movement offices throughout the country were closed.
The judiciary, dominated by the conservative faction headed by the Supreme Guide, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has detained dozens of political supporters and allies of Mr Khatami and closed down 35 liberal publications in the run-up to the presidential poll. The campaign of intimidation and elimination is designed to prevent Mr Khatami from declaring his candidacy.
