Iran’s ambassador to Ireland, Ebrahim Rahimpour, will be summoned to the Department of Foreign Affairs next week to hear of Government concerns over the mass trials of opponents of the regime under way in Tehran.
The official diplomatic presentation, a collective decision by the 27 EU members states, arose from a proposal on Monday from the Swedish presidency. The EU, Washington and leading Iranian reformers have rejected the mass trials as “show” trials.
In the second trial to open within a week, on Saturday a court charged a Frenchwoman, two Iranian staffers at the British and French embassies and dozens of senior moderates with spying and plotting to overthrow clerical rule.
The French embassy agreed to provide bail to secure the release of the woman, teaching assistant Clotilde Reiss, the news agency IRNA reported yesterday.
The semi-official Fars news agency reported that Ms Reiss could not leave Iran if she was released on bail.
Meanwhile, the speaker of Iran’s parliament yesterday rejected as “baseless” an opposition leaders accusation that moderates had been raped in jail following their detention in unrest linked to June’s disputed presidential poll.
“Based on parliament’s investigations, detainees have not been raped or sexually abused in Iran’s Kahrizak and Evin prisons.
“Such claims are totally baseless,” Iran’s state television quoted Ali Larijani as saying.
Two of the defeated candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mirhossein Mousavi, have claimed some protesters, both men and women, had been raped in prison. Iran’s police chief had previously acknowledged that some detainees had been tortured.
Many of the post-election detainees were held in south Tehran’s Kahrizak prison, built to house people breaching vice laws. At least three people have died in custody there.
The abuse allegations have divided hardline politicians, many of whom backed president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
A committee set up by Mr KarRoubi and Mr Mousavi submitted a list of 69 people killed in protests to parliament on Monday. The list contradicted the official figure of 26 deaths. Amnesty International urged Iran to allow international observers to monitor the trials of more than 100 people accused of involvement in the protests that followed the election.
Last month, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the closure of the “sub-standard” detention centre at Kahrizak.
Iranian authorities have acknowledged some protesters were tortured there and said its director had been jailed.
The hardline Kayhan daily urged the judiciary to arrest Mr Karroubi if his charges were proved to be wrong. “If Karroubi cannot prove the allegations then he should be punished without any consideration,” said Hossein Shariatmadari, chief editor of the daily, who is appointed by Khamenei.