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Iranian Opposition Group Wants Ruling On Arrests
TEHRAN, March 19 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Iran Freedom Movement (IFM), Iran's main opposition party, hit back Monday after conservative-dominated courts effectively closed it down less than three months before the country's crucial presidential election.
The opposition group was accused of trying to overthrow the Islamic regime. The IFM advocates the formation of a democratic government based on Islamic ideology, but not run by clerics. Although the group had already been formally banned since 1988, its activities had until now been partly tolerated.
A revolutionary court on Sunday declared all IFM activities "forbidden and illegal".
"The IFM has always acted legally, in an open and peaceful manner, and has guarded against all extremism and acts contrary to the interest of the nation and the Islamic regime," the IFM, a progressive Islamist party, said in a statement. "The courts must give a ruling as soon as possible after these accusations."
The IFM cautioned its supporters and appealed for calm because Iran "needs security more than ever."
The IFM was founded in the early 1960s by Mehdi Bazargan, the country's first prime minister after the 1979 Islamic revolution, but was later banned on direct orders of the Islamic republic's founder, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Currently, courts in Teheran say that the group seeks to topple the regime by abusing the press to spread rumors.
In a statement faxed to IRNA, the IFM said that they are apparently linked to the "technically outlawed but somewhat tolerated Freedom Movement of Iran," adding that, "It said that the detainees had fine-tuned their calls with terrorists and hypocrites, an allusion to the Iraqi-based terrorist Mujahideen Khalq Organization."
"The IFM and the so-called Religious-Nationalist Alliance are not entitled to conduct any activity and the offenders will be seriously prosecuted," a court statement warned.
On March 12, Iranian security forces rounded up IFM supporters in a raid, 12 of whom remain in jail. An IFM leader Ezzatollah Sahabi, 75, has been imprisoned since December 2000 for comments critical of the Islamic regime made at Tehran University in November, as well as for his attendance at a controversial conference on Iran last spring in Berlin.
The IFM supports reformist President Mohammad Khatami, who has remained silent and hesitated over his intentions whether to seek a second term in office in the June 8th presidential elections.
The conservative courts also on Sunday closed four reformist newspapers that back the currently embattled Khatami, the latest in a string of dailies and periodicals to be shuttered in the past year.
The Public Relations Department at Tehran's Justice Department said in a statement on Sunday that a ruling has been issued for temporary closure of the daily "Doran-e Emrouz". The Department said the verdict came following "offenses of the daily that ran counter to article six of the press law."
The arrests have been strongly condemned by the largest of the reform groups, the Islam-Iran Participation Front.
Observers say the Islamic Republic of Iran is passing through a period of deep change. Khatami is leading Iran's push to rediscover democracy and reconnect with the outside world. Yet the religion-based state will remain difficult to reform.
Those in favor of the status quo, the "conservatives", remain in positions of power and influence, most especially in the courts.
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