NCRI – The Iranian regime has implemented a new wave of suppressive measures in Tehran and major cities across the country including Isfahan and Tabriz since Monday, the day that the final list of approved candidates by the Guardian Council was announced.
Agents of Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the State Security Forces have been put on state of alert, and anti-riot forces have been stationed in cities.
The Internet has been slowed down severely, making users access to news websites very difficult.
Meanwhile the repressive measures against rival factions and disqualified candidates and has begun and are continuing.
The State Security Forces have arrested a number of members of Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani’s election campaign. The editor of one the websites affiliated to Rafsanjani was detained on Saturday. A number of other websites affiliated to Rafsanjani and other candidates have been filtered.
The state-run IRNA news agency close to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reported on Tuesday (May 21) “a wave of illogical and unjustified arrests in provinces across Iran.”
The agency asked: “Under whose permission have supporters of the government been arrested?”
The report said that a cleric, Bahman Sharifzadeh, had been summoned to the special court for the clergy. It said also that five websites affiliated to Ahmadinejad’s faction has been filtered “without any prior notice or justification.”
The report added: “It seems that there exists a scenario for pressuring the government and its supporters – particularly that a written commitment has been obtained from those detained to not take part in any political activity. Who is going to pay the high price for doing that?”
Nader Qazipour, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission in the Iranian regime’s parliament (Majlis), had previously threatened that in the case of the disqualification of Ahmadinejad’s favorite candidate by the Guardian Council, “security measures were foreseen to be implemented that would not allow the slightest movement by anyone. Ahmadinejad can do nothing.”
Prior to his comments, Sadegh Larijani, the head of judiciary, on May 15 had described any claim of “election fraud” as ‘Western plotting and conspiracy’. He said: “Anyone allows himself to step in the direction a new sedition, God willing, will be faced with decisive and legal action by all.”
The Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran
May 23, 2013
