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Iran Releases Opposition Member on Bail
TEHRAN, Sept 6 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iranian authorities released on bail Wednesday another one of 60 political dissidents arrested earlier this year after holding him in solitary confinement, the state news agency IRNA reported.
Mohammad-Hossein Bani-Assadi, 60, was the 14th prisoner with alleged links to the banned Iran Freedom Movement (IFM) to be freed in the past few weeks, pending trials that are expected to begin soon, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
Bani-Assadi was freed on bail, bringing the number of those released to 14, his daughter told IRNA Wednesday.
"My father was released at around 8:00 pm after we posted 100 million tomans [$125,000] in bail with [Tehran's Revolutionary] Court," she said by phone, noting her father is in perfect health, IRNA reported.
The public relations department of the Revolutionary Court trying the 60 political dissidents announced that a number of jailed opposition members would soon be freed.
Meanwhile, an unnamed source told IRNA by phone that the head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court, Ali Mobasheri, has set the trial for the jailed dissidents in October. He did not elaborate on the issue.
The conservative daily Jomhuri Eslami quoted Mobasheri as saying Thursday that the cases of those released had passed the preliminary stage of examination.
"That does not mean they will be acquitted, but it is a gesture which is in line with their human rights," he said.
Mobasheri denied that any political pressure had been brought to secure the releases, and he criticized "certain people [who] have behaved in a sentimental fashion without any knowledge of the contents of the files."
On Wednesday, Mehdi Karubi, the speaker of Iran's reform-majority parliament, called on the conservative-led judiciary to release all liberal opposition members jailed since March.
"I call on the judiciary to release all the religious-nationalists [at once] rather than bit by bit," Karubi said during a meeting with judicial officials, including deputy judiciary chief Hadi Marvi and several advisors of President Mohammad Khatami.
The families of the detainees recently approached Khatami as he was leaving parliament after delivering a speech in defense of his cabinet nominees, to ask him to personally intervene and obtain the release of their relatives, IRNA reported.
Last month, the same families sent a petition to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asking him to also secure their release.
Some 60 liberal nationalists, most IFM members, were detained in a crackdown in March, prior to June's presidential elections. They have been accused of "plotting against the regime in liaison with foreign forces."
The IFM, which supports Khatami's reforms but opposes the regime, had been outlawed for years but was generally tolerated until the arrests.
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