According to ACS-NAN, Ali Motahari, a representative in the Iranian parliament, has called on Hassan Rouhani, the country’s president, to follow up on Mehdi Karroubi’s request to hold a public trial.
Mr. Motahari said today, 30 Farvardin (April 18), to the ILNA news agency, “The president, both as the executor of the constitution and as the head of the Supreme National Security Council, has the duty to pursue this matter”.
Mehdi Karroubi, one of the protesters against the results of the 2009 elections won by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently wrote an open letter from house arrest to Mr. Rouhani, telling him that he recognizes his inability to lift the house arrest and has no expectations in this regard, but has demanded a public trial and said that whatever the court’s ruling is, he will accept it. Read more
Mr. Motahari has described Mr. Karroubi’s request as “a logical demand” and once again called his situation of being under house arrest without a court order “illegal”.
Besides Mr. Karroubi, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, another candidate who protested the results of the 2009 elections, along with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, has been under house arrest for over 5 years.
Some government figures close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, have reported that if there is a public trial for these individuals, the court’s verdict would be “harsher” than house arrest, but Mr. Motahari said this claim “cannot be logical”.
The representative of Tehran’s people in parliament said, “The claim that if a trial is held, the sentence will be harsher, so it is better not to hold it, cannot be logical; because the arguments and defenses must be heard and it must be determined what factors led to such behavior from them and who was the initiator. These naturally would lessen the charges against them.”
Mr. Motahari said, “All the factors involved in those events [following the elections], including some government institutions, the former president, and these two detained individuals, should be tried simultaneously in a competent public court, and whatever the ruling is, everyone should accept it and the case should be closed.”
