Iran Guard wants former president, moderates tried

TEHRAN (Reuters/AFP) - Irans powerful Revolutionary Guard said on Sunday that opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi, a defeated presidential candidate and a former president should be tried for inciting unrest after a disputed presidential poll.
The June 12 presidential election plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposed deepening divisions in its ruling elite and set off a wave of protests that left 26 people dead.
If Mousavi, (defeated candidate Mehdi) Karoubi and (ex-president Mohammad) Khatami are main suspects behind the soft revolution in Iran, which they are, we expect the judiciary ... to go after them, arrest them, put them on trial and punish them, said Yadollah Javani, head of the Revolutionary Guards political bureau, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Javani said a plot to topple the 30-year-old Islamic regime through a velvet coup has been exposed.
The question is who were the main planners and agents of this coup. What is the role of Khatami, Mousavi and Karroubi in this coup? he said in an article in Sobh-e Sadegh, the Guards weekly journal.
Masoud Jazayeri, deputy chief of staff of Irans armed forces, also said plotters should be dealt with and called for more control on foreign embassies to deter colour coups.
Iranian citizens... are waiting to see how the agents of this recent plot will be confronted, the official IRNA news agency quoted him as saying.
In an attempt to calm widespread anger, Iran jailed the head of the Kahrizak detention centre after three people died in custody in the southern Tehran prison as the judiciary held trials of detainees arrested over post-election unrest.
The head of the centre has been sacked and jailed. Three policemen who beat detainees have been jailed as well, IRNA quoted Irans police chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moghaddam as saying.
Kahrizak was built for jailing violators of Irans vice laws. A police statement issued on Thursday confirmed that serious violations took place at Kahrizak.
Ahmadi-Moghaddam also confirmed that some post-election detainees had been tortured in Kahrizak prison, which Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered closed in July for lack of necessary standards to preserve the rights of prisoners.
Authorities say the voter unrest detainees have been transferred to Tehrans Evin prison, where many political prisoners are held.
They also say some 200 post-election protesters remain imprisoned, including senior pro-reform politicians, journalists, activists and lawyers.
Iranian prosecutor Qorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi said all necessary legal measures would be taken against those who had violated the law in Kahrizak, the Etemad-e Melli newspaper reported.
Leading moderates including Mousavi and former president Khatami have called for the immediate release of detainees, saying their confessions were made under duress.
Meanwhile, Irans press again blamed Britain for the post-election turmoil.
The British embassy: headquarters for the coup command, read the front-page headline of the government newspaper Iran.
London, the command room of street riots in Tehran, with Washington and Tel Avivs cooperation, echoed the leading newspaper Kayhan.
The paper, whose director is appointed by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charged that British diplomats were in constant contact with the Mousavi campaign.
Khamenei himself pointed an accusing finger at London over the unrest, describing it as the most most evil of Irans enemies. But the opposition has dismissed the charges of foreign meddling, saying the election protest is a grassroots homegrown movement by Iranians demanding their stolen votes.