Tehran: Iran`s judiciary warned opposition
leaders on Thursday that prosecutors had enough evidence to try them
and accused them of offences tantamount to those of the rebel
People`s Mujahedeen.
"I say to the leaders of the sedition that we have enough
evidence against you," ILNA news agency quoted judiciary chief
Sadeq Larijani as telling prosecutors in the strongest threat
yet that opposition leaders could be tried.
"If the regime has shown tolerance until now, don`t
suppose that we do not understand. How can we not find out
when it is the duty of the judiciary to deal with such cases?"
For the first time, Larijani compared the actions of
opponents of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s
controversial June re-election to the regime`s most despised
enemy, the People`s Mujahedeen.
Using the regime`s standard term of abuse for the rebels,
he likened the "actions of the leaders of the sedition to
those of the hypocrites at the start of the revolution."
He was alluding to the People`s Mujahedeen`s initial
support for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini`s regime against
ethnic minority nationalists and the left following the 1979
ouster of the shah.
The group then broke decisively with Khomeini and went on
to make common cause with Saddam Hussein`s regime in Iraq
during the two countries` devastating 1980-88 war.
Larijani said the behaviour of the opposition leaders was
"contrary to national security" and a "clear crime."
PTI
