FORMER IRANIAN president Hashemi Rafsanjani yesterday backed away from further confrontation over the country’s disputed presidential election by cancelling a potentially explosive Friday prayer sermon over fears it would trigger a renewed crackdown.
In a surprise move, Mr Rafsanjani said he would not lead this week’s sermon at Tehran university as scheduled, for fear of provoking renewed violence by security forces against supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi, his reformist ally who says June’s election was stolen from him.
The decision came amid concerns of a repeat of events that surrounded Mr Rafsanjani’s sermon last month, when government forces fired tear gas and arrested dozens of Mousavi followers after they turned up in their thousands to register discontent over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
The decision is highly unusual for Mr Rafsanjani, who is Tehran’s longest-serving Friday prayer leader and one of four clerics designated to lead the sermons.
It appeared to signal a political climbdown after he used his previous sermon to challenge the political authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by criticising the suppression and detention of demonstrators after the election.
The impression was reinforced when it emerged Mr Rafsanjani had failed to answer a letter from another reformist candidate, Mehdi Karroubi, alleging that male and female detainees had been raped.
“Some of the detainees of the unrest claim that the detained girls have been sexually assaulted with such brutality that they have all sustained intense vaginal tearing,” Mr Karroubi’s letter said.
Mr Karroubi had called for the experts’ assembly, a powerful clerical body headed by Mr Rafsanjani, to investigate the allegations.
But he decided to publish the claims after Mr Rafsanjani failed to respond within a 10-day deadline. – (Guardian service)