Iranian Reformists Criticize Detainees' Trials: Via Voice of America.

A former Iranian president and a former prime minister are sharply criticizing the trials of people detained in the nation's post-election unrest, saying the detainees' confessions are invalid.

Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami, who now heads one of the largest reform parties in the country, says the mass trial that opened Saturday is unconstitutional. Mr. Khatami called the judicial proceedings a "show" trial, and he lashed out at the court's tactics Sunday.

He said prosecutors are relying on confessions that were illegally obtained.  

Defeated presidential candidate and one-time prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi says the detainees were tortured into confessing.
( Read more ... )

VOA News - Former Iranian President: Election 'Coup' Against Democracy: Via Voice of America.

Former Iranian president and leading reformist Mohammad Khatami says the outcome of Iran's disputed presidential election is a "coup" against democracy.

Khatami's statement Wednesday comes two days after Iran's powerful Guardian Council upheld the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi also criticized the election outcome Wednesday, calling the government led by Mr. Ahmadinejad "illegitimate."
( Read more ... )

Laura Secor: Burning Silence in Iran: Via Online Only: The New Yorker.

Silence seems to have rolled over Iran’s burning landscape, not because the situation has calmed, but because we know it less and less. Reporters have been banned, communications slowed, and civic organizations that might aggregate information in ordinary times have ceased to function. One exile who usually has an inside line to events unfolding in his country complained to me yesterday that he knows nothing, because all of his friends have been arrested. A normally outspoken analyst inside Iran told me that, as much as he would love to talk, he was in hiding, having been threatened by the office of Tehran’s chief prosecutor. But over here, the conversation must go on, and it has adopted a new, increasingly speculative, trope. The struggle in Iran, we are hearing, really comes down to a fight among the élites inside the power structure.

It is clearly true that Iran’s élites are disunited, but to place great emphasis on this fact is misleading.
( Read more ... )