The call came as controversy heated up yesterday over allegations that protesters detained in the crackdown had been tortured. Hard-line clerics across Iran demanded that a senior reform leader be prosecuted for contending that some detainees had been raped by their jailers.
The former reformist lawmakers' appeal was to the Assembly of Experts, a body of clerics that has the power to name the supreme leader and, in theory, remove him - though such a move has never been tried.
The assembly had no immediate response to the group's letter, sent late Thursday.
But even if the call is ignored, it was the most direct challenge to Khamenei yet in the turmoil that has embroiled Iran since its disputed June 12 presidential election.
The letter breaks a major taboo against overtly targeting Khamenei, whose position atop the political-clerical hierarchy has long been unquestioned. Opposition Web sites reported the letter but did not say how many former lawmakers had signed it.
It denounced the crackdown, in which hundreds of protesters and opposition politicians were arrested and, the opposition says, 69 people killed. It also denounced the trial of 100 politicians and activists accused of seeking to topple the Islamic Republic.
The letter said Kahrizak prison on Tehran's outskirts, where much of the abuse allegedly took place, was worse than the U.S. prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
The former lawmakers said that the supreme leader was responsible for the judicial system and the security forces who carried out the crackdown. They demanded a legal probe based on a provision that says if the supreme leader "becomes incapable of fulfilling his constitutional duties," he will be dismissed.
The letter was addressed to Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president and cleric who heads the 86-member Assembly of Experts. He has sided with the opposition in the election crisis, but agreeing to investigate Khamenei would likely be too dramatic a step for him to take.
About two-thirds of the assembly members are strong loyalists of Khamenei and would oppose such a move.
There was no sign that opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who claims to have won the vote, backed the letter.
Security forces and the elite Revolutionary Guard crushed the mass protests that erupted in support of Mousavi, who says President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election victory was fraudulent.
In past weeks, there have been reports of young protesters who died in prison, apparently from torture or other abuse. This week, top Mousavi ally Mahdi Karroubi went further, saying male and female detainees had been raped by their jailers. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani quickly denied the allegations.
In his sermon at Tehran's main Friday prayers, hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami denounced Karroubi's allegations as "total slander against the Islamic system" and demanded he be prosecuted.
No comments:
Post a Comment