A senior Iranian cleric said yesterday there was no need to hang opposition chiefs as their influence was already dead — a softer line that reflected reluctance to make martyrs out of leaders of the Green movement.
Members of parliament and angry pro-government crowds have called for the swift arrest, trial and execution of Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi after they staged their first rally in more than a year on Monday in which at least two people died.
But Friday prayers leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, a hardliner who heads the hugely influential state Guardian Council, said calls to hang them were superfluous as they and their movement were as good as dead already.
“To those who call for their execution, I should say that they have already been executed. They have lost all their credibility and prestige — everything.”
Mousavi and Karoubi lost the 2009 presidential election to the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a vote they say was rigged, something the government denies.
They became figureheads of the biggest anti-government street protests since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, unrest that was crushed by the end of 2009 by a government which blamed Iran’s foreign enemies for stirring sedition.
Monday’s rallies in Tehran and other cities, inspired by uprisings that toppled the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt, were their attempt to revive a movement that had been all but silent since December 2009.
Another has been called for tomorrow to commemorate the deaths of two young men who were shot dead on Monday and authorities say that once again the demonstrations will not be tolerated.
The Green movement leaders have been long been derided by the government as “seditionists” but their revolutionary and religious credentials — Mousavi was a prime minister in the 1980s and Karoubi is a cleric and former parliament speaker — would make their arrest or execution a major step that would risk further angering their supporters.
After prayers, large crowds took to the street to call for the Green leaders’ execution. Some demonstrators carried pictures of Sanee Zhaleh, a 26-year-old art student who was killed on Monday and has been claimed as a martyr by both sides.
A majority of parliamentarians signed a motion earlier this week calling for them to be tried for the capital offence of being “corrupt on earth.
Judiciary chief Sadeq Larijani has said that “definitely they will be prosecuted.”
But Jannati, who called for the arrest and punishment of the opposition leaders just weeks after the 2009 election, said yesterday any decision on the Green leaders’ fate should be left with the judiciary but that their lines of communication should now be completely cut.
“The judiciary can do one thing right now,” he said. “Put them under house arrest ... cut all their communication means, telephone, Internet, everything.”
Mousavi and Karoubi already say they are under unofficial house arrest and communicate with their supporters only via website messages which are rapidly spread on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
Karoubi issued a statement saying he had nothing to fear from a trial, as long as it were held in public.
“Hold an open trial for me immediately if you dare ... I will show who really wants to overthrow the system,” he said in a message released on his Sahamnews website.
Opposition supporters say they gathered in huge numbers on Monday but were violently prevented from holding proper rallies. The government has blamed the protesters themselves for the shooting which killed two people.
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