WASHINGTON (WashingtonTV)—The numbers of the dead and injured are reportedly rising as protests continued on Thursday against the outcome of Iran’s 12 June presidential election, in which incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the winner.
Official sources have only confirmed that seven people were killed in protests on Monday, but unofficial reports estimate the actual number to be higher. Some human rights groups in Iran say that 33 people have died in protests throughout Iran so far.
The names of those killed and the precise location of the clashes resulting in their death has not yet been published. The branch of the Office for Fostering Unity [Persian: Daftar Tahkim-e-Vahdat], of Alameh Tabataba’i University reports on its websites that seven students died during Sunday night and Monday night [local time] in attacks on student dormitories at Tehran University.
In recent days, the government of the Islamic Republic instituted a ban on all foreign and some domestic reporters in the country who are prohibited from reporting at the scene of protests or taking photographs and film.
Nevertheless, reports indicated a fresh wave of arrests and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran announced that more than 500 people had been arrested since Saturday.
The detainees include Iran’s former foreign minister and general-secretary of the Nehzat Azadi [Freedom Movement] Party, Ibrahim Yazdi, who was arrested yesterday while receiving care at [Tehran’s] Pars Hospital,” the party’s public relations outfit said.
The Freedom Movement Party officials added that 18 of their members were arrested in Iran’s northwestern city of Tabriz today, including the head of the party’s Tabriz chapter.
Also yesterday, reports confirmed the arrest of Mohammad Atrianfar, a leader of the Servers of Construction Party, as well as the arrest of political analyst and journalist Saeed Laylaz.
Earlier, several members of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization [MIR], a pro-reform coalition, including Behzad Nabavi and Mostafa Tajzadeh were arrested. The general-secretary of the Islamic Iran Participation Front Party, and Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a member of the party’s central council, have also been detained.
Amir Kabir University of Tehran’s student news letter [AUTnews] reports that 20 students from Hamedan Province’s Bu-Ali Sina University in western Iran were arrested today as they tried to leave the scene of a protest.
The report adds that “Assistant Professor Izadi of the [university’s] Mechanical College” was arrested along with the students.
A separate report by AUTnews indicates that 150 protesting students at Mazandaran University in northern Iran, six students in Razi University of the western Province of Kermanshah, along with four students at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin were jailed.
At the same time, the website of a political organization, Pouyesh-e Mowj-e Sevvom [Persian: Seeking the Third Wave] – which backs pro-reform presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi – reports that Mohammad-Reza Jala’ipour, the spokesperson of the organization, was arrested yesterday.
