2009-07-30 - Tehran - Abbas Abad - P76 -




As many as tens of thousands of protesters meet at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, whose shooting death was videotaped. Meanwhile, the first group of protesters arrested in the unrest heads to trial.

Reporting from Tehran and Beirut -- Thousands and possibly tens of thousands of mourners, many of them black-clad young women carrying roses, overwhelmed security forces today at Tehran's largest cemetery to gather around the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose videotaped shooting at a June 20 demonstration stunned the world.

Amateur video apparently taken at Behesht Zahra cemetery and quickly uploaded to the Internet shows a sea of mourners moving through the cemetery chanting slogans.

"Death to the dictator," chanted those in one long procession, kicking up a storm of dust as they walked. "Neda is not dead. This government is dead."

Afterward, the crowds began to gather in front of central Tehran's Grand Mossala mosque, defying authorities who had prohibited the use of the site. Protesters chanted slogans as they rode the subway to the venue, setting the stage for more clashes as dusk approached.

Uniformed security forces initially clashed violently today with some of the mourners, supporters and leaders of the opposition, who were there to protest and grieve for those killed in recent unrest. Unsuccessful presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi attempted to attend the graveside ceremony marking the religiously significant 40th day since the death of Agha-Soltan and others killed in the fighting.

"Oh, Hossein! Mir-Hossein," the mourners chanted in support of him.

According to one witness, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, Mousavi stepped out of his car only to be surrounded by police, who forced him back into his vehicle and out of the cemetery.

At first, mourners were confronted by security forces, who struck some with batons and made arrests in an attempt to bar them from gathering at Tehran's Behesht Zahra cemetery, the country's largest. The tree-lined streets leading to the graves of Agha-Soltan and others were blocked by riot police, the witness said.

The witness said protesters identified and violently confronted several plainclothes Basiji militiamen.

"Police, police, support us," the crowd chanted. "God is great!"

Among those arrested was award-winning director Jafar Panahi, whose movies "The Circle" and "Crimson Gold" have garnered international acclaim, along with his wife and daughter, a source close to the family told Agence France-Presse.

But as people poured out of the nearby subway station and taxis along the highway, security forces retreated. One witness said police released detainees and began cooperating with the mourners, directing them to Section 257 of the cemetery, where Agha-Soltan and others were buried.

The request for a permit to hold a ceremony in the city's Grand Mossala mosque later today was denied, but protesters have said they will try to come together near the site of the mosque anyway and march along nearby streets if they are prevented from entering the site.

Iranian officials say 30 people died in the weeks of unrest, but human-rights monitors and independent observers say the number killed in the protests and subsequent crackdown is at least twice that figure in the capital alone.

On Wednesday, the Paris-based monitoring group Reporters Without Borders urged authorities to explain the death of journalist Alireza Eftekhari, who died June 15 but whose body was handed over to relatives on July 13. A press release said Eftekhari died as a result of a severe beating.

Also Wednesday, the Tehran prosecutor's office announced the arrest of Saeed Shariati, a member of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front's central committee.

Meanwhile, authorities have announced that they will place the first group of protesters swept up in weeks of unrest on trial. According to a statement from by the prosecutor's office, the group of alleged rioters will be charged with offenses including having ties to terrorist organizations, invading and torching military bases, destroying public property, looting and preparing and dispatching news reports for "enemies" of the Islamic Republic.

"A group of self-sold individuals . . . began acting illegally and against the norms inside the country, behaving like thugs, paving the path for the notorious opportunism of the enemy that led to many material losses and the loss of life for our citizens," the statement said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Still under massive public and international pressure, authorities have acknowledged official wrongdoing as well. Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week ordered the Kahrizak detention center south of Tehran closed.

Meanwhile Iran's police chief, Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, admitted that some law enforcement officers "went to extremes" during protests after the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Nothing should cause police officers to break the law in any way," Ahmadi Moghaddam said, according to the website of state-owned Press TV.

Late Wednesday, two prominent jailed reformist politicians, Behzad Nabavi and Mostawfa Tajzadeh, were allowed to phone their families from prison for the first time since they were arrested June 13, a day after the election. And today authorities moved Said Hajjarian, a prominent reformist strategist who was critically wounded in a 2000 assassination attempt, from prison to a detention house with medical supervision, the Mehr news agency reported.

But such steps may not be enough to appease an emboldened opposition supported by a grassroots political movement unlike any the Islamic Republic has experienced. Former President Mohammad Khatami, speaking to a group of reformist lawmakers, called for an investigation into allegations of torture and murder.

"It is not enough to only close a substandard detention center," he said, according to Baran.org.ir, the website of his charitable foundation.

"Crimes have been committed. Lives have been lost and immoral treatments have been meted out to our dear youth, women and men," he said. "With the supreme leader's order of closure [of Kahrizak], a fresh opportunity has come up to launch an inquiry into the tragedy and punish the perpetrators."

- daragahi@latimes.com