TEHRAN: An influential Iranian lawmaker yesterdayurged the judiciary to end the house arrests of opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi and to put them on trial.
“The protracted house arrests without trial lack legal or religious justification,” conservative MP Ali Motahari told parliament in remarks carried by the Isna news agency.
Mousavi and Karroubi have been held incommunicado under separate house arrests since February 2011 for orchestrating massive, unprecedented street protests sparked by a disputed presidential election two years earlier. The protests turned deadly when authorities resorted to a heavy-handed crackdown in which thousands of protesters, reformist activists and journalists were arrested.
Motahari slammed the judiciary for not having resolved the issue already, more than four years after the 2009 election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president for a second term that Mousavi and Karroubi claimed was rigged.
Ex-Gaddafi aide killed in Benghazi
BENGHAZI: Gunmen yesterday killed a former security officer who served under slain dictator Muamer Gaddafi in the violence-ridden eastern city of Benghazi, security and medical sources said.
“Retired colonel Muftah Najem was shot dead,” said a spokeswoman for Al Jala hospital where the body was taken.
A security source said unidentified men fired from a vehicle as Najem was driving in Al Sabri district, “killing him on the spot”.
Benghazi, cradle of the 2011 uprising that toppled Gaddafi and led to his killing by rebels in October that year, has suffered a wave of attacks.
Both security forces and foreign missions have been targeted, including a September 2012 assault on the US consulate that killed the ambassador and three other Americans. The government has struggled to consolidate control in the vast and mostly desert country, which is effectively ruled by a patchwork of local militias and awash in heavy weapons looted from Gaddafi’s arsenals.AFP
