AFP: A top Iranian reformist from a banned political party who had been jailed for anti-regime propaganda was released on Monday, an opposition website said.
TEHRAN, January 24, 2011 (AFP) – A top Iranian reformist from a banned political party who had been jailed for anti-regime propaganda was released on Monday, an opposition website said.
“Ali Shakouri-rad, one of the prisoners of the post-election events, was released from jail,” Kaleme.com, the website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, reported.
Shakouri-rad, a leader of the banned Islamic Iran Participation Front and former lawmaker, was jailed on December 9 for “propagating against the regime and spreading lies,” according to the Tehran prosecutor’s office.
His arrest came after publication of comments in which he attributed “lies to the esteemed head of the judiciary, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani,” the office said at the time.
Shakouri-rad, a critic of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, was previously freed on bail on October 28, two weeks after being arrested for what Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi called “security reasons.”
Iran has banned two reformist parties, Shakouri-rad’s party and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedeen Organisation, both of which backed Mousavi in the June 2009 presidential election.
Several high-ranking members of both parties were arrested and given long prison terms in a major government crackdown on reformists, political activists and journalists following the disputed vote which gave Ahmadinejad a landslide victory.
