Montazeri: Resisting people’s demand is religiously prohibited

More splintering among Iran’s clerics is reported by Reuters. The most senior opposition ayatollah, Hossein Ali Montazeri, distanced himself further from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared the June 12 elections valid and demanded a halt to public protests in a hard-line sermon on Friday. In a statement posted Sunday on his Web site, Ayatollah Montazeri said:

“Resisting people’s demand is religiously prohibited … I am calling for three days of national mourning from Wednesday.”

Last week the ayatollah described the election results as something that “no wise person in their right mind can believe.”

Below you could find an amateur video uploaded to YouTube on Sunday shows a mass of protesters marching and shouting what the video blogger translates as: “Have no fear, we are all together,” and then “Down with dictator.” The video is said to be of a demonstration on Sunday on Shirazi Street in Tehran.