February 07-2014
The regime has moved Mehdi Karrubi back into his apartment to live in detention with his wife.
Their son, Mohammad-Hussein Karrubi, wrote on his Facebook page Sunday that the authorities had just moved his dad hours earlier from detention at a location in Tehran to his apartment in the capital’s northern Jamaran area.
The main change is that he will now be reunited with his wife.
Opposition sources have said Karrubi was being held alone this past year in an apartment in northern Tehran operated by the security services. There has been no official comment on those reports.
Karrubi, a former Majlis speaker and losing Reformist candidate in the 2009 presidential elections, was originally detained under house arrest along with his wife, Fatemeh, in February 2011.
About a year ago, Karrubi was removed from his apartment and taken elsewhere while his wife was released from detention.
There was no explanation for Sunday’s change in policy. It is possible this is an effort by the regime to assuage the anger of reformists, who have been demanding that Karrubi be freed and that his fellow candidate, Mir-Hossain Musavi, and Musavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, who were confined at the same time, also be freed.
The family says Karrubi, who is 76 years old, has undergone four operations while confined apart from his wife. The return to his apartment and his wife may be an effort to improve his health and living conditions in order avoid his death in jail-like conditions of solitary confinement.
Neither Karrubi nor the Musavis have ever been charged with any crime.
Karrubi’s son wrote on Facebook that his father is now being held in his family’s second floor apartment, and security forces had taken up residence in an apartment on the first floor to prevent visitors from reaching him.
The son said in remarks to the Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA) that his father’s living conditions had improved in recent weeks and he had been allowed regular weekly family visits at the location where he had been detained.
Many Reformists are demanding a public trial for Karrubi and Musavi. The government is reluctant to give them the publicity that would entail. Karrubi’s son says his father insists on a public trial and “won’t protest, no matter what the sentence.” The son says his father just wants his defense published in the media.
