According to CNN, Iranian MP Ali Motahari has asked President Hassan Rouhani to follow up on Mehdi Karroubi's request for a public trial.
Mr. Motahari told the ILNA news agency today, April 18, "The president, both as the executor of the constitution and as the head of the Supreme National Security Council, has a duty to follow up on this issue."
Mehdi Karroubi, one of the protesters against the results of the 2009 election, which declared Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner, recently wrote an open letter to Mr. Rouhani from house arrest, telling him that he recognizes his inability to lift the house arrest and has no expectations in this regard, but he has called for his public trial and said that he will accept whatever the court's verdict is. Read more
Mr. Motahari called Mr. Karroubi's request "a logical demand" and once again called his situation, which is under house arrest without a judicial order, "illegal."
Apart from Mr. Karroubi, Mir Hossein Mousavi, another candidate protesting the 2009 election results, has also been under house arrest with his wife Zahra Rahnavard for more than 5 years.
Some government figures close to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, have said that if these individuals were tried publicly, the court sentence would be “more severe” than house arrest, but Mr. Motahari said that this “cannot be logical.”
The representative of the people of Tehran in the parliament said, “The fact that some people say that if a trial is held, the verdict will be harsh, so it is better not to hold one, cannot be logical; because the words and defenses must be heard and it must be determined what factors caused such behavior from them and who initiated it. This naturally makes their charges lighter.”
Mr. Motahari said, “All the factors that contributed to those events [after the elections], including some government institutions and the former president and the two detainees, should be tried simultaneously in a public court in Saleh, and whatever the verdict, everyone should accept it and the case should be closed.”
