Iran: Mousavi and Karroubi behind prison bars
By GVF
The leaders of Iran’s opposition Green Movement have been imprisoned.
Iran’s former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and former parliament speaker Mahdi Karroubi, have been taken to Tehran’s Heshmatiyeh prison, according to Mousavi’s official website Kaleme.
“Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi, have been arrested and taken to Tehran’s Heshmatiyeh prison along with their wives,” reported Kaleme. “According to the latest information received from reliable sources, their arrest and transfer to prison is certain, but the precise timing of their transfer [to the Heshmatiyeh prison] is still unclear.”
Today, Iran’s Prosecutor General Mohseni E’jei, finally admitted that the two opposition leaders had in fact been under house arrest and in complete isolation from the outside world. In the past two weeks, Iranian authorities had refrained from making any remarks regarding Mousavi and Karroubi’s house arrest.
Mousavi’s daughters had in recent weeks attempted to obtain information about their parents’ state of well-being, but to no effect. The lights inside the Mousavi home have reportedly been turned off in recent days, causing many to believe that Mousavi and his wife are no longer inside.
In addition, Saham News, the official website of Karroubi’s National Trust Party has cited one of Karroubi’s neighbours as saying that “at midnight on Thursday, eight vans belonging to the security forces were parked in front of the parking garage of Karroubi’s residence and after a few minutes they all left the area with another car that came out from within the compound.”
In an interview with the BBC’s Persian Service, former member of parliament Ali Akbar Mousavi Khoiniha has spoken of the poor conditions at the prison, saying that the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was the person responsible for anything that might happen to Karroubi and Mousavi in the prison.
A day before opposition protesters take to the streets of the capital, chants of “Allah-O-Akbar”; “Death to the Dictator”; “Ya Hossein Mir Hossein”; “Ya Mahdi; Sheikh Mahdi” have been heard in a number of neighbourhoods in Tehran including Mirdamad, Tajrish, Zaferaniyeh, Darous, Fereshteh, Vali-Asr Sq, Yousef Abad, Shahrake Gharb, Gisha Bridge and Sadeghiyeh.
