Reuters: Dozens of people were arrested at a commemoration service Saturday for an Iranian activist who died at her father’s funeral earlier in the week after a scuffle with security forces, an opposition website reported.
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Dozens of people were arrested at a commemoration service Saturday for an Iranian activist who died at her father’s funeral earlier in the week after a scuffle with security forces, an opposition website reported.
The Kaleme website said security forces in Tehran beat up several mourners at the service held, as is traditional in Iran, three days after the death of Haleh Sahabi.
Sahabi, 54, died of a cardiac arrest at the funeral of her father Ezatollah, a prominent veteran dissident, Wednesday. Opposition websites said she was either pushed or punched by security forces, something government-sanctioned news agencies denied.
The events may add to tensions ahead of the second anniversary of the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which sparked the biggest demonstrations since the 1979 Islamic revolution by protesters who said the vote was rigged, something the government denies.
Haleh Sahabi was one of the many people arrested during the post-election crackdown and was given a two-year jail sentence.
She had been allowed out of jail to attend the funeral of her father, who was jailed both before the revolution by the Shah’s regime and after it by the Islamic Republic, spending a total of 15 years behind bars.
