Iran jails wives, children of reformists: report

Iranian authorities have detained 35 relatives and supporters of jailed reformists, including wives and children, the reformist Sarmayeh newspaper reported on Saturday.

In a separate report reformist website norooznews said "armed, masked guards" on Thursday raided a prayer ceremony in Tehran attended by families and supporters of jailed reformists who opposed the June re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Sarmayeh reported that initially 60 people were arrested, among them the wives and children of jailed reformists including from the Islamic Iran Participation Front (IIPF) party, and that 35 remain in detention.

The prayer ceremony to pay respect to the jailed reformists was being held at the residence of reformist Shahab Tabatabai's father-in-law.

Tabatabai, a senior campaigner for the main defeated presidential candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, has been sentenced to five years in prison for his alleged role in the post-election unrest which rocked Tehran.

Those detained included two pro-reform journalists and the wife of Abdullah Ramezanzadeh, a former government spokesman who was himself arrested after the presidential election and accused with many others of fomenting post-vote unrest.

"Now ... we do not have security even in our own houses," Mowjcamp quoted Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipour as saying. She is the wife of another leading reformist detained after the election, former deputy interior minister Mostafa Tajzadeh.

Now ... we do not have security even in our own houses

Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipour

An "unbelievable attack"

The IIPF website, norooznews, condemned what it called an "unbelievable attack on a prayer ceremony," adding: "How will they clean the disgraceful stain of the attack by armed, masked guards on a family gathering?"

The website stressed that Mousavi's proposed political front, the Green Path of Hope, will not be "harmed by arresting several of our dear ones. Such actions mean rather the defeat of the coup people than a show of their power."

Opposition leaders have repeatedly charged that the June 12 poll was rigged to return Ahmadinejad to power.

Three people who were detained in the post-vote unrest have already been sentenced to death. Other reformists have been given varying jail terms.

The authorities have portrayed the huge opposition protests that erupted after the vote as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic Republic.

The opposition says more than 70 people were killed as Revolutionary Guards and Islamic militia put down the protests. The authorities estimate the death toll at about half that figure and say it includes members of the security forces