Reporting from Beirut – Hard-line supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad employed the nation’s judiciary against two major moderate political parties in their boldest attempt to excise Iran’s reform movement from the political scene.

The prosecution at the fourth session of an extraordinary legal proceeding, derided by international and domestic legal experts as a “show trial,” put a severely disabled reformist leader on trial and urged the judge to outlaw the Islamic Iran Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mujahedin Organization, two pillars of the reform movement that took control of the country’s presidency and parliament during a liberal era that began in the late 1990s and ended earlier this decade.

Hundreds of dissidents, journalists and protesters were swept up, jailed and physically abused in the weeks of mass demonstrations and unrest that followed Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election, which was marred by allegations of massive vote-rigging in incumbent Ahmadienjad’s favor.

Iran’s hard-line political faction began a series of trials this month trying to tie the unrest to foreign and domestic enemies, showcasing televised admissions of guilt obtained from political dissidents, journalists and others held for weeks in solitary confinement.

Statements posted to reformist websites quickly mocked the trial. “Our people may continue to tolerate desecration of reformist leaders only out of dignity, but their patience is wearing thin,” reformist lawmaker Siroos Sazdar told the reformist ParlemanNews.ir website.

The trial comes as Ahmadinejad’s hard-line group confronts the formidable power of seasoned conservative rivals in parliament, a newly energized judiciary recently stacked with its enemies and a smoldering protest movement that regards the government as illegitimate.

Still, the trial could damage reformists’ ability to operate legally and hamper efforts by opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi and others to turn the protest movement into a legitimate political force.

The reform movement has long been a thorn in the side of hardliners seeking to maintain the values and atmosphere of the early years of the revolution in an increasingly modern Iranian society.

At today’s trial, the prosecutor reiterated years-old allegations that reformists and civil-society activists worked with Western organizations such as the Soros Foundation to foment unrest in Iran and topple the government in a peaceful “velvet” revolution of the kind that swept away authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe.

“Defeated political groups joined hostile Western media and the embassies of colonialist governments to take advantage of public sentiment and emotion for certain losing candidates for the purpose of setting fire to the achievements of the nation,” the indictment read, according to government media.

The wording of the alleged confessions reflected the worldview of Iran’s hard-line extremist factions. One defendant confessed that the son of Ahmadinejad rival Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was involved in financial shenanigans to bolster his father’s political ambitions.

At one point, the indictment quoted Saeed Hajjarian, a premier reformist strategist who was disabled in a 2000 assassination attempt, as having said, “We had decided to activate NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in Iran, and one of our objectives was to empower civil society and use Soros Foundation’s experiences in view of a color revolution.”

At another point, a lesser-known defendant read Hajjarian’s supposed confession, in which he announced his resignation from the leadership of the reformist Islamic Iran Participation Front.

“I express my personal resentment with post-election machinations which endangered national security,” he quoted Hajjarian as saying. “I committed big errors through my inaccurate analyses of the recent elections and I do regret my behavior. I do apologize to the Iranian nation because of my inaccurate analyses which resulted in incorrect actions.”

Only six of the 19 brought into the expansive courtroom were on put on trial. There was no explanation for the presence of the others, including Iranian American social scientist Kian Tajbaksh and dissident journalists Ahmad Zeidabadi and Saeed Laylaz.

Many of the defendants put on trial had one common denominator: They have been harshly and vocally critical of Ahmadinejad. As in the previous three sessions of the trial, only media controlled by Ahmadinejad or his loyalists were granted access to the courtroom. The families of those detained complained in a letter to judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani that the trials violated the basics rights allowing press access to the court and trial by jury.

“The lawyers are not even informed of where the hearings are held, nor have they studied the dossiers,” said the letter, according to the website NoroozNews.ir. “We ask you, as Iran’s top judge, to bring the ongoing judicial case back on the right track to keep the judiciary from losing more face.”

Hajjarian’s lawyer of 10 years, Gholam-Ali Riahi, stepped down after he was told that Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi had appointed another attorney to defend his client, according to a reformist website.

In addition to the trials, the reputation of Iran’s legal system has been further marred by allegations that protesters held in detention were raped by security officials. A parliamentary committee has agreed to hear the testimony of four alleged victims.

Leave a Reply