http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009620184151643728.html
UPDATED ON:
Saturday, June 20, 2009
22:37 Mecca time, 19:37 GMT
Police crack down on Iran protests
Planned demonstration in Tehran is met with tear gas, water cannon
and batons.
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Police crack down on Iran protests
Protesters fought back with stones and set fires
in the streets of the capital, Tehran [AFP]
Riot police in Iran have used tear gas, water cannon and batons to
disperse about 3,000 people attempting to protest over the disputed
presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmdinejad, the president.
Witnesses said that dozens of people were hospitalised after being beaten
by police and pro-government militia in the capital, Tehran, on Saturday.
"Lots of guards on motorbikes closed in on us and beat us brutally," one
protester said.
"As we were running away the Basiji [militia] were waiting in side alleys
with batons, but people opened their doors to us trapped in alleys."
Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, a defeated reformist candidate, had
planned to stage a rally in the city's Revolutionary Square, but arrived to
find their way blocked by police.
A witness told Al Jazeera that police were turning people away.
"The roads were pretty much blocked by the militia, they were out with
retractable metal batons. It looked like they were very frantically trying to
keep people from the area," he said.
Protests 'quelled'
Amateur video of Saturday's protests, which could not be independently
verified, showed dozens of Iranians running down a street after police fired
tear gas.
Other footage showed protesters trying to give first aid to a badly
injured woman in the street.
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Your media: submit your clips of the protests to Al Jazeera
The protesters apparently threw stones at the police and set fires in the
streets.
Al Jazeera's Alireza Ronaghi, reporting from Tehran, said that the
protests had largely been quelled by Saturday evening.
"The presence of security forces were very high, they definitely wanted
to take back the streets of Tehran ... right now I don't expect that many
protesters are concentrated anywhere in Tehran," he said.
He said that state television had quoted the head of Iran's police force
as thanking the Iranian people for not taking to the streets and taking the
police warnings seriously.
As the clashes took place, a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up
outside the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic
revolution in 1979, injuring at least two people, local news agencies reported.
As night fell, the protesters kept up their show of defiance shouting
"Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) from the rooftops, a deliberate echo of a move
made during the Islamic revolution in 1979.
Barack Obama, the US president, condemned the violence and urged Tehran
to allow Mousavi's supporters to stage peaceful protests.
"The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching," he
said.
"We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the
Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own
people."
'Ready for martydom'
In a statement posted on the website of his Kalemeh newspaper, Mousavi
repeated his demand for the elections results to be annulled and hit out at a
speech by Ayatollah Khameini, Iran's supreme leader.
"If this huge volume of cheating and changing the votes ... which has
hurt people's trust, is presented as the very evidence of the lack of cheating,
then it will butcher the republican aspect of the system and the idea that
Islam is incompatible with a republic will be proven," he said.
In a sermon on Friday, Khamenei ruled out any fraud in the June 12 vote
and stressed there could be no doubting the re-election of Ahamdinejad.
An unnamed ally of Mousavi told the Reuters news agency that the former
prime minister has said he would continue his fight and was "ready for
martyrdom".
Earlier on Saturday, Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, another defeated
presidential candidate had declined to meet the Guardian Council, Iran's
highest legislative body, concerning 646 complaints of voting irregularities in
the poll.
State television quoted a council spokesman as saying that the Guardian
Council had expressed its readiness to "randomly" recount up to 10 per cent of
the ballots.
The contested result gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a tally of about
63 per cent, to Mousavi's 34 per cent
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