BERLIN, October 15, 2009 (AFP) – Iranian agents are keeping tabs on opponents to the Islamic government based in Germany after June's disputed election, and Tehran is even pressing Berlin to quell protests, German television reported Thursday.
"We know that the Iranian (secret) service has its people circulating in demonstrations," Panorama, a programme on public channel ARD, quoted the deputy head of German intelligence in Hamburg, Manfred Murck, as saying.
"We have evidence that people are being filmed, that the services want to identify people," Murck said in a programme to be aired Thursday.
Panorama, citing Iranian opponents and sources in the Iranian embassy, said the agents make threatening phone calls and that people are arrested when they visit relatives back in Iran.
It reported that the German foreign ministry had said that it had received "repeated requests from the Iranian government to limit the independent expressing of views by Iranians living in Germany."
Iran's ambassador in Germany, Ali Reza Sheikh Attar, denied this.
"There has been no letter or written message from us on this. There have been a lot of lies spread in the media about the protests," he told Panorama.
The Iranian embassy in Berlin was not immediately available for comment.
Iran saw huge protests in the weeks following the announcement that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won re-election hands down, amid allegations from defeated candidates of massive electoral fraud.
The heavy-handed tactics of the Iranian authorities against the protests, with several thousand people arrested, led to international condemnation, including from Germany.
