Reuters: A 20-year old university student arrested for participating in anti-government street protests in Iran in December rejected charges of spreading moral corruption as the trial of 16 opposition supporters resumed on Wednesday. TEHRAN, Feb 3 (Reuters) – A 20-year old university student arrested for participating in anti-government street protests in Iran in December rejected charges of spreading moral corruption as the trial of 16 opposition supporters resumed on Wednesday.
All of the accused were arrested after clashes between protesters and security forces on Ashura Day, the Shi'ite ritual mourning ceremony, on Dec. 27.
Eight people died in what was the most violent unrest since last year's disputed presidential election brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back to power.
Five of the defendants, including the university student, were charged on Saturday with the capital offence of "moharebeh" (waging war against God). The remainder were accused of public order and national security offences, a court website said.
One of the defendants was born in Manchester, England and has British nationality, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
"I do not think taking to the street means spreading corruption," the student told the court, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. The defendant's lawyer called for the charges to be dropped and said his client, whose name and gender were not provided, had no criminal record.
Street protests that followed the presidential poll in June plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the victory of Islamic revolution in 1979 which toppled the Shah.
On Thursday, Iran hanged two men convicted of moharebeh over the unrest and a conservative cleric on Friday urged that more opposition protesters be executed.
Fars reported that additional arrests had been made in connection with the Ashura unrest, taking the total number of opposition protesters detained in the aftermath of the Dec. 27 protest to more than 450.
The swift trials of protesters may be intended as a warning to the pro-reform opposition not to stage similar rallies on Feb. 11, when Iran marks the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution.
"We are getting close to the revolution day…," Mehdi Karoubi, one of the defeated reformist candidates in the June vote, said on his website Sahamnews on Wednesday.
"Suppression, mass detentions … holding show trials and heavy convictions are not appropriate ways to curb what has happened and still going on in the country," he said.
Opposition backers have seized on dates marked in the Islamic revolutionary calendar to revive the protests, defying arrests and crackdowns by the hardline leadership.
Iran's moderate opposition says the June election was rigged in favour of Ahmadinejad. The government denies any fraud.
Thousands of people, including senior reformers, were detained after the poll for fomenting unrest. Most of them have since been freed, but more than 80 people have been jailed for up to 15 years and five have been sentenced to death.
(Writing by Reza Derakhshi; Editing by Noah Barkin)
