-Caveat Lector- Tehran Under Tight Security By AFSHIN VALINEJAD .c The Associated Press DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Iranian police kept Tehran under a tight leash Thursday, manning checkpoints across the Iranian capital and demanding identity papers as they searched for the students who ignited a week of pro-democracy protests. Several student protesters were missing, one student told an Iranian newspaper. A news agency reported that some people were being interrogated by the police - and another newspaper described scenes of hysteria when one busload of detainees was driven off to prison. Government officials said those found guilty of damaging public property during the protests will be tried as ``enemies of the state'' and could face the death penalty. The protests brought to a head the power struggle between hard-line clerics who have been in control of the government since the Revolution and moderates who back the reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The streets were unusually quiet Thursday around Tehran University, the stronghold of the pro-democracy activists who have mobilized the most significant unrest since the Islamic revolution of 1979. The protests began June 9, hours after police stormed a dormitory on the campus, leaving one person dead and 20 others seriously injured. The Information Ministry said ``several people'' had been arrested in connection with the dormitory raid and the ``subsequent riots in Tehran.'' The ministry statement did not give the number of detainees, but said they were being interrogated, the official Iranian news agency reported in a dispatch received in Dubai. Security forces defused a bomb planted by insurgents in northwest Tehran on Mullah Sadra Avenue, the Tehran Times reported Thursday. The bomb was ``very powerful and could have inflicted heavy losses if exploded,'' it said. The pro-government paper also said troops also discovered ``a hideout of terrorists'' in the city, adding that the ``terrorists were disguised as protesting students.'' The insurgents were not identified, but Iranian authorities usually refer to members of the Iraqi-based opposition group, the Mujahedeen Khalq, as ``terrorists.'' One protest leader, Ali Afshari, said a number of pro-democracy student demonstrators were seized by conservatives during Wednesday's huge pro-government rally in downtown Tehran, the Neshat daily reported. Hard-liners at the rally ``attacked a group of student protesters,'' Afshari was quoted as saying. ``They beat the students, then tied their hands and feet with wire and took them to an unknown location in a waiting ambulance.'' It was not clear how many students were seized nor how they were identified in a crowd estimated at 100,000 people. Another newspaper reported disturbances outside the headquarters of the Tehran Law Enforcement Forces when a bus holding detained protesters left the premises. Mothers cried out to see their sons and shouted for information about who was on the bus and where it was going, the reformist Kar va Kargar newspaper reported Thursday. They were told that some detainees were being transferred to the city's Evin and Eshrat Abad prisons. Tehran residents, in calls to Dubai, said Iran's mobile phone network failed to work for a second day Thursday. It was not clear whether the authorities had shut down the network, but during the demonstrations earlier this week, protesters had used mobile phones to coordinate their moves and warn each other of approaching police. The week of protests began after the hard-line conservatives, who control many branches of the government, banned a moderate newspaper last week, sparking a small protest from the students. After the resulting police raid on the dormitory, students and pro-reform civilians took to the streets in the thousands - one demonstration drew 25,000 people - and the protests spread to eight other Iranian cities. But the hard-liners have regrouped in the past few days and succeeded in banning all protests except one for their own supporters on Wednesday. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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