Guardian Council Chief Says Iran Will Try UK Embassy Staff

3 July 2009 :: staff

Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of Iran’s Guardian Council, has told a gathering at Friday prayers that Iran will prosecute British embassy staff accused of fomenting violence against the government. The UK has roundly rejected the allegations, and EU ministers are considering measures to be taken to pressure the Iranian government to release the detained UK embassy staff. Britain’s foreign office said it is “very concerned” about Jannati’s statement suggesting prosecution of the local staff.

The UK has denied that there was any effort by embassy staff to participate in, coordinate or foment unrest at mass opposition demonstrations last month, but has also said it never imposed a policy barring local staff from attending political rallies in their own time. Jannati reportedly told worshipers, “In these developments their embassy here maintained a presence … Individuals were arrested and inevitably they will be tried as they have (made) confessions”.

The issue of confessions is already a contentious one, as numerous Iranians detained by security forces have said there is an orchestrated and persistent effort ongoing to force detainees to make false confessions, especially regarding the regime’s claims that opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is spearheading a foreign-backed effort to destabilize the country and overthrow the constitutional system of the Islamic Republic.

Jannati himself made reference to the allegations that the opposition movement critical of election fraud is really a veiled foreign coup attempt, declaring: “The enemy made an effort to poison the people”. His remarks suggest the Guardian Council has now firmly declared its alignment with the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene’i and Pres. Ahmedinejad. Since election night, when Khamene’i declared Ahmedinejad’s contested official victory a “divine assessment”, the Basij militia have publicly declared their siding with Ahmedinejad, and now the head of the Guardian Council has done the same.

Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, head of the Assembly of Experts, the clerics who select —and can remove— the supreme leader, has publicly declared his view that the election results are fraudulent and has backed opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi. Rafsanjani’s family have been detained and questioned, and Mousavi is thought to be under constant, or shifting, house arrest. Former president Mohammad Khatami has also decried the handling of the election and the subsequent brutal crackdown on dissenters.

Anne-Marie Obajtek-Kirkwood, of Drexel University, has said “Irregularities took many forms: voting ballots came in late, mobile voting boxes took fishy itineraries, the number of mobile voting boxes increased to 14,307, ten times more than in 2005″. She added that “The participation rate was 100 percent in 30 Iranian cities, a city like Taft had a rate of 141 percent, Kouhrang 132 percent and Chadegan in the province of Ispahan 120 percent”.

Human rights and election monitoring groups in the west have continually stressed that the US should not get politically involved in the sorting out of Iran’s electoral dispute, but that violations of human rights, like mass arrests and brutality against and even the killing of demonstrators must be condemned. Iran’s conservative clerics have been pushing for a united front against any claims of electoral wrongdoing, using detention and disruption to prevent demonstrations and crush support for the opposition.

Threats of prosecution, claims of confessions to crimes of subversion and the call from the Basij militia to prosecute Mousavi for crimes against the state, appear to be part of a concerted effort to threaten opposition figures with possible capital punishment, in hopes of causing them to give up their push for a new round of elections.

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