November 29 2013
A prominent Iranian cleric says two opposition leaders placed under house arrest after the country’s divisive 2009 presidential election deserve to be hanged.
Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati delivered that message in his sermon at Tehran Friday prayers last week. He didn’t mention Mir-Hossain Musavi or Mehdi Karrubi by name. Instead, he referred to them as the “leaders of sedition,” the popular epithet used by hard-liners to describe them.
Jannati said the two are alive today because of “Islamic mercy.”
He said, “The regime has been merciful to these people. They are confined to their homes. If they need a doctor, they get one. But still they refuse to express remorse.”
He cited the thousands of death sentences meted out in 1988 to members of the Mojahedin-e Khalq, which the regime prefers to call the Monafaqin or hypocrites. “When the Monafaqin were in jail and stood by their beliefs, the Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] decreed that they should be executed,” he recalled. If Musavi and Karrubi express remorse, Jannati said, “there may be a way out.”
Many hardliners have demanded public apologies by the two men as a precondition for release.
Both men were put under house arrest in February 2011 after calling for street demonstrations in support of the Arab uprisings. They have never been tried and no charges have ever been filed against them. The national chief of police has said publicly that it was Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi himself who ordered their confinement.
Jannati also mentioned the ongoing nuclear talks in Geneva in the course of his sermon, saying that like Khamenehi he did not expect anything to come of the talks. He complained that the Big Six powers were demanding everything of Iran while offering nothing in exchange.