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TEHRAN (AP) – Anti-riot police guarded the offices overseeing Iran’s disputed elections. A statement from Mousavi posted on his Web site urged his supporters to resist a “governance of lie and dictatorship.”
An expected announcement on the full outcome was temporarily put on hold. A reason for the delay was not made public, but it suggested intervention by Iran’s Islamic authorities seeking to put the brakes on a potentially volatile showdown.
Ahmadinejad had the apparent backing of the ruling theocracy, which holds near-total power and would have the ability to put the election results into a temporary limbo.
There were no immediate reports of serious clashes or mass protests, and the next step by Mousavi’s backers were unclear. Mousavi, who became the hero of a powerful youth-driven movement, had not made a public address or issued messages since declaring himself the true victor moments after polls closed and accusing authorities of “manipulating” the vote.
“I’m warning that I won’t surrender to this manipulation,” said the Mousavi statement on the Web on Saturday. “The outcome of what we’ve seen from the performance of officials … is nothing but shaking the pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran sacred system and governance of lie and dictatorship.”
He warned “people won’t respect those who take power through fraud” and called the decision to announce Ahmadinejad winner of the elction was a “treason to the votes of the people.”
The headline on one of Mousavi’s Web sites: “I wont give in to this dangerous manipulation.” Mousavi and key aides could not be reached by phone.
It was even unclear how many Iranians were even aware of Mousavi’s claims of fraud. Communications disruptions began in the later hours of voting Friday — suggesting an information clampdown. State television and radio only broadcast the Interior Ministry’s vote count and not Mousavi’s midnight press conference.
Iranian elections always bring a loosening of the rules on public speech and behavior, but many say this year’s election is different, in part because of the social crackdown of the past four years under Mr. Ahmadinejad.
“What’s happening now is more than what should happen before an election,” said Mashalah Shamsolvaezin, a political commentator and former director of several reformist newspapers. “This is an expression of protest and dissatisfaction by people. They are venting their frustration and feeling very powerful.”
There have been scattered street clashes in recent days, but the police have generally not intervened, in part — analysts say — because they do not want to unleash protests by the unruly and mostly young crowds.
The rallies appear to have surprised and unsettled the authorities, and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message broadcast on state television, warned against any further escalation.
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On Sunday, a group of employees in the Interior Ministry, which oversees the polls, and top officials from the campaigns of the two reformist candidates, Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, sent a letter to Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, chair of the country’s powerful Guardian Council, citing discrepancies in the run-up to the election.
According to the letter, the actual number of ballots printed for the first round of voting is 59.6 million, but the Interior Ministry officially says the number is 56 million.
Ali Akbar Mohtashami Pour and Morteza Alviri, of the Mousavi and Karroubi campaigns’ committees on poll supervision, also said that the number of electoral stamps circulating is “twice the number of polling sites plus 10 percent”.
“The stamps have been dispatched without any written procedures and this is a most dangerous and worrisome event,” they said in the letter.
“If organised fraud is to take place, this will not happen at polling branches, nor on site, and not at the ballot casting or counting, but through use of extra ballots and stamps and through use of additional boxes and mobile ballot boxes, especially as we have been informed that soldiers’ birth certificates have been collected at military bases,” it said.
Saeed Razavi Faghih, a spokesperson for the Karroubi campaign, told IPS, “Inviting the [pro-Ahmadinejad] Revolutionary Guard Corps to supervise ballot box security instead of the police has raised serious doubts for us.”
The reformist campaigns also charge that a contract has been signed between the Ministry of Information and Ministry of Telecommunications to send out four million confidential text messages on Friday.
“What top-secret orders are to be issued on Election Day and to whom? Why can’t people know about this [contract]?” the letter asks.
Iran Vote Results Spark Violence
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
Results
While pre-voting polls mostly favored a run-off between Rafsanjani and Mostafa Moeen, the actual vote counts from the Ministry of Interior unexpectedly put Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mehdi Karroubi in second and third places. Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad led with respectively 21.0% and 19.5% of the votes, and were followed by Karroubi (17.3%), Moeen (13.93%), Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf (13.89%), Ali Larijani (5.9%), and Mohsen Mehralizadeh (4.4%). Domestically, there were 29,317,039 votes, which amounts to a turnout of 62.66%, as there were 46,786,418 eligible voters.
Election controversies
After the first round of the election, some people, including Mehdi Karroubi, the pragmatic reformist candidate who ranked third in the first round but was the first when partial results were first published, have alleged that a network of mosques, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards military forces, and Basij militia forces have been illegally used to generate and mobilize support for Ahmadinejad. Karroubi has explicitly alleged that Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, was involved. Ayatollah Khamenei then wrote to Karroubi and mentioned that these allegations are below his dignity and will result in a crisis in Iran, which he will not allow. As a reply, Karroubi resigned from all his political posts, including an Advisor to the Supreme Leader and a member of Expediency Discernment Council, on both of which he had been installed by Khamenei. The day after, on June 20, a few reformist morning newspapers, Eghbal, Hayat-e No, Aftab-e Yazd, and Etemaad were stopped from distribution by the general prosecutor of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi, for publishing Karroubi’s letter.
Favorite son of Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
“We are the unwelcome witnesses…they want to get rid of all the foreign media … the streets last night were full of ant-riot police,” she said in the RTVE radio interview. “The reason there has been no repression [until now] is definitely because they know we were there.”
Several foreign news organizations complained that Iranian authorities were blocking their reporters from covering protests.
Similar cases with foreign correspondents from The Netherlands and Germany .
BREAKING NEWS –
Iran supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei orders probe of vote fraud
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
From eyewitness accounts, the Tehran University has draped black curtains, a sign of mourning. The clash between Basij militia and students lasted till 3 a.m. Many students were seriously wounded in the attacks.
According to news I received from my contacts in Tehran the Basij and the police attacked the student in Tehran University last night (Sunday), and the attack on students lasted until 3 am in the morning. The students were shouting slogans such as “death to dictator” and “death to Khamenei.” The police closed the streets to prevent students from leaving University grounds and from other people coming in. They attacked the students with tear gas, and students fought back by throwing stones.
Furthermore between 200-300 police and Basij came into the dormitories and attacked and beat the students. They Basij pushed some students off the balconies and some students jumped themselves out of fear for their lives.
… Iranian police has destroyed the dormitory at Tehran University, the biggest university in Iran. Iranian police atcs directly under leader rule (Khamenei).
A university student is injured by wild iranian police (Basij)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."