The mystery over the whereabouts of the two main Iranian opposition leaders, Mir Hussein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, has deepened, with contradictory reports over whether they had been jailed on the eve of a nationwide protest or remained under extreme house arrest, completely cut off from the outside world.
The two have not been seen in public or by their adult children since just before the Feb. 14 protests which they called for, ostensibly in solidarity with Arab uprisings, but which quickly transformed into anti-government rallies nationwide.
The Web site Kaleme, published by Moussavi supporters, said both men and their wives were now incarcerated at Heshmatieh prison in Tehran, but it was unclear when exactly they were removed from their homes.
Photo: AFP
Another Web site, Saham News, which is run by Karroubi’s supporters, quoted one of his sons as saying that a neighbor saw the couple carted off to an undisclosed location about midnight on Thursday.
Eight security vans surrounded the house before Karroubi and his wife were taken away in a car, and the house has been dark at night since, neighbors said.
Moussavi’s children had approached their house many times, but security guards turned them away with ambiguous and contradictory answers about their whereabouts, Kaleme said. The same happened to the Karroubi children, they said.
The official IRNA news agency on Monday quoted an official as confirming the report, at least obliquely. Iranian Prosecutor General Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehi said the government severed all outside contact with the opposition leaders to end sedition and would take unspecified other measures if required.
However, the semiofficial Fars news agency denied that the two couples were imprisoned. Fars quoted an unidentified official as saying the two men remained under house arrest, if isolated.
The families insisted yesterday that the two men and their wives were still held in a jail despite a judicial official denying it.
“We, the children of Moussavi and [his wife Zahra] Rahnavard, utterly reject the report denying our parents’ detention in the prison of Heshmatiyeh,” Kaleme.com Web site quoted the opposition leader’s daughters as saying.
“The only way to disprove the report of their arrest is by us meeting them immediately at our father’s home. Given the evidence over the past days and weeks, we are certain that our parents are not at home,” it said.
Karroubi’s family too insisted that the cleric and his wife were in prison.
“All the evidence shows Mehdi Karroubi and Fatemeh Karroubi are not present at their home,” Saham News quoted the family as saying.
The two men, who have never accepted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial June 2009 re-election, were put under “complete” house arrest after their supporters staged protests on Feb. 14, the first in a year, their Web sites reported last month.
Judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani accused the two men of “treason,” while lawmakers demanded they be hanged.
Opposition supporters planned to hold fresh demonstrations for their release later yesterday, but Ejeie warned that such illegal gatherings would not be tolerated.
“Anyone who acts against the law will be dealt with,” the state TV Web site quoted him as saying.
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