Iran arrests seven election campaigners

An exile-based Iranian opposition website reports that authorities have arrested at least seven people who attended a campaign meeting for a centrist presidential candidate.

The Sunday report by Kaleme.com says police made the arrests at a gathering to support candidate Hasan Rowhani in northern Tehran on Saturday.

It said the arrests were made after many participants chanted slogans calling for the release of Mir Hossein Mousavi, an opposition leader and candidate in Iran’s disputed 2009 elections who has been under house arrest for more than two years.

Rowhani is one of eight candidates cleared by the Islamic Republic’s constitutional watchdog, the Guardian Council, to run in this year’s June 14 elections.

Most other approved candidates were hard-liners, while their most charismatic challengers were disqualified.