Iran's supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Sunday appointed the commander of a conservative militia as the new chief of the national police force, the Iranian Student News Agency reported.
The new chief, Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi Moghadam, 44, will replace Muhammad Baqer Qalibaf, who resigned to run for president in last month's election.
General Ahmadi Moghadam is the commander in Tehran of the Basij, a conservative volunteer militia that is a branch of the Revolutionary Guards and that has taken part in crackdown against pro-democracy protests. He is also a senior commander in the Revolutionary Guards. The Basij, whose members supported Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative candidate who won the presidency, uses the vast network of mosques around the country as its organizational base.
Two other presidential candidates and veteran politicians, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mehdi Karroubi, accused the Revolutionary Guards and Basij of using their influence to press Iranians to vote for Ahmadinejad.
In a letter on Sunday, Karroubi urged the departing president, Mohammad Khatami, to disclose what he called "election irregularities" to the public. Khatami has said he will submit a file about accusations of election irregularities to the judiciary.
Human-rights advocates have been saying over the past several days that they are concerned about the condition of a jailed reformist journalist, Akbar Ganji, who has been on a hunger strike for nearly 30 days. His lawyer has said his health has deteriorated.
Khamenei said in his order appointing Moghadam that he was being chosen for the position because of his "revolutionary record and his past services in military and security positions," the student news agency reported.
Moghadam fought in the eight-year war with Iraq that ended in 1988, in which 250,000 Iranians died. He holds a doctorate in strategic management from Iran's National Defense University.
Political analysts had warned that the election of Ahmadinejad could bring a wave of repression against political and social freedoms allowed since the election of Khatami, a reformist, in 1997.
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