Iranian security asked to protect poll campaigners

Reuters, SwissInfo:

Iran's interior minister asked security agencies on Saturday to protect campaigners in Friday's presidential election, after hard-liners beat up a speaker at a reformist rally in the holy city of Qom. READ MORE

Newspaper photographs showed Behzad Nabavi with a black eye and cuts on his head from the attack on Thursday after a rally that he said had been disrupted by people using teargas.

"I haven't been beaten like this since the days of SAVAK," Nabavi, a leftist stalwart of the 1979 revolution, told a news conference. SAVAK was the Shah's secret police.

Nabavi, a former deputy parliament speaker, is a supporter of Mostafa Moin, the leading reformist candidate in the June 17 election. The campaign had previously been relatively free of violence.

"Apparently in recent days there is an order from certain centers of power for organized physical confrontation with Moin's campaign meetings," Nabavi said.

"The fact that they used teargas and handcuffs ... shows they were members of 'parallel security and military entities'."

Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari wrote to Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi and judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi asking them to snuff out such intimidation, the state news agency IRNA reported.

"It should not be difficult or impossible for the country's powerful security apparatus to identify and confront those who commit such unlawful and offensive actions," he wrote.

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, bidding to regain the post he held from 1989 to 1997, is considered the most moderate of the five conservative candidates. Three reformists, including Moin, a former education minister, are also standing.

Opinion polls show Rafsanjani in a strong lead, but well short of the 50 percent he needs to avoid a run-off vote. A new opinion poll released on Saturday showed Moin edging former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf out of second place.

PSEUDO-REFORMISTS?

As hecklers tried to shout him down in Qom, Nabavi denounced other contestants in the polls, many of them former senior state or security officials, for portraying themselves as reformists.

"Your candidates try to show they are reformist and talk about legal freedoms. They talk about fresh air and fresh tastes but your reactions won't be to their advantage," he said.

Top clerics have been trying to counter apathy among young voters dismayed at the slow pace of President Mohammad Khatami's reforms since his landslide election wins in 1997 and 2001.

Half the country's 67 million people are under 25 and anyone over 15 can vote, but many have indicated they will not do so.

The preacher at Friday prayers in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, called for a huge turnout to "make America angry."

The United States accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons and sponsoring terrorism. Tehran denies the charges.

Khatami, who is barred from standing for a third consecutive term, failed to overcome hardline resistance to change despite the popular mandate he won in successive polls.

Wooing Iran's young electorate, all eight candidates have been promising to create jobs and ease social restrictions.

Hamid Samini, 17, wearing a Union Jack t-shirt given to him by his brother in Britain, said he would vote for Rafsanjani, hoping he would tackle the Islamic vigilantes who harass him and his friends -- especially when he wears the t-shirt.

"He's a man who can handle the country," said Samini, wearing baggy jeans and hair spiked with gel.

Samini, a school dropout, said he lived in a poor area of southern Tehran where power and water cuts were frequent.

"I'm fed up with this system. This country is ruined. I'll leave next year to join my brother," he said, adding that he planned to reach Britain as an illegal migrant via Greece.