Iran Cleric Says British Embassy Staff to Stand Trial

By JOHN F. BURNS and STEPHEN CASTLE

LONDON — A high-ranking Iranian cleric said Friday that Iran planned to put some of the detained British embassy staff members on trial, a move that could provoke a tightening of European sanctions against Iran, including the withdrawal of ambassadors.

The cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the head of the influential Guardian Council, told worshipers at Friday Prayer in Tehran that the embassy employees had “made confessions” and would be tried for their role in inciting protests after last month’s disputed presidential election.

In London, the Foreign Office said it was urgently seeking clarification from the Iranian government as to whether the cleric’s remarks represented official policy.

“We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behavior,” Foreign Secretary David Miliband said in a statement. “We remain deeply concerned about the two members of our staff who remain in detention in Iran.”

He said he planned to speak to the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.

Of the nine staff members seized Sunday, five were released Monday after the first British and European protests, and Iranian state media said Wednesday that three more had been freed, leaving one in custody. British officials, however, said that two remained under arrest.

As local employees of the embassy, those arrested did not have diplomatic immunity. None are British citizens.

Although the Foreign Office has denied that it had any role in stirring the ferment in Iran, officials in London have said that the embassy in Tehran had not forbidden its local employees to participate in the protests as individuals. The Iranian authorities say they have video evidence of some embassy employees at the protests.

Hours after the threat of trials, the European Union seemed to hold back from an out-and-out showdown, resolving to summon Iranian ambassadors in all 27 of the group’s countries to send “a strong message of protest against the detention of British Embassy local staff and to demand their immediate release,” said a European diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, following the group’s rules.

Other graduated measures — like a slowdown in issuing visas to Iranian officials seeking to visit Europe and a potential withdrawal of all European ambassadors — would be considered, the diplomat said. He said Iranian diplomats would be told that the arrest of the embassy employees and the threat of trials were considered a threat to all European Union diplomatic staff members in Iran.

The Iranian authorities accused the employees of fomenting and orchestrating the protests that drew tens of thousands of Iranians into Tehran’s streets after the June 12 election. The demonstrations provoked a security crackdown that had largely ended the public protests but not the political ferment over the elections. The hard-line incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has been officially declared the winner by a landslide, but his main opponent, Mir Hussein Moussavi, has vowed to continue his campaign to have the official result declared fraudulent.

Ayatollah Jannati, who is an ally of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, did not say how many of the detainees would be tried or on what charges, news reports said. But, in unofficial translations provided by news agencies, he said that the British Embassy had a “presence” in the postelection unrest and that “some people” had been arrested. It was “inevitable” that they would face trial, he said.

The Guardian Council is an influential panel of 12 clerics whose responsibilities include vetting elections. On Monday it certified Mr. Ahmadinejad’s victory, a step that emboldened hard-line officials to warn of a harsher crackdown if protests continued.

Britain has sought diplomatic help from the European Union, which is thought to hold more sway with Iran. But some European countries, led by Germany, have been reluctant to risk worsening ties with Iran, particularly at a time when European diplomats have been pressing it for concessions over its nuclear program. They have argued that a withdrawal of envoys, a step urged by Britain, would leave few diplomatic options if the crisis deteriorated further.

But there were signs that the threat of trials had stiffened resolve in other countries.

“Our solidarity with Britain is total,” said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, adding that France favored tightening sanctions.

The Iranian authorities have frequently blamed foreigners for the turmoil, but they have singled out the British as instigators. They cited Britain’s covert role in past political upheavals, including the toppling in 1941 of Reza Shah Pahlavi, suspected of having pro-German sympathies during World War II, and the ouster in 1953 of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government nationalized Iran’s British-dominated oil industry.

At the same time, Tehran has sent mixed signals about the fate of the embassy employees.

Hassan Qashqavi, the foreign ministry spokesman, said Monday that Iran was eager to maintain normal diplomatic relations with the European Union, its biggest trading partner. “Reduction of ties is not on our agenda with any European country, including Britain,” he said.

But on Wednesday, the semiofficial Fars news agency said that one of the embassy employees, who was not identified by name, “had a remarkable role during the recent unrest in managing it behind the scenes.”

While Ayatollah Jannati is not a member of the government or the judiciary, his words as the head of the Guardian Council and a close associate of the supreme leader carry some weight.

At Friday Prayer — a forum Iran has often used to convey significant political messages — he accused Britain of trying to provoke a “velvet revolution.” As long ago as March, he said, the British Foreign Office had said street riots were possible during the June elections. “These are signs, revealed by themselves,” he said.

John F. Burns reported from London, and Stephen Castle from Brussels. Alan Cowell contributed reporting from Paris.

Iran's Guardian Council Affirms Vote Result

By Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

TEHRAN, June 29 -- A top supervisory body reviewing Iran's disputed June 12 election formally dismissed all opposition complaints of fraud Monday and affirmed a landslide victory for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, setting off shouts of protest from Tehran's rooftops but leaving opponents with few options amid an intensifying government crackdown.

The decision by the Guardian Council, a 12-member panel of Shiite Muslim clerics and jurists who oversee elections and certify results, was announced about 10 p.m. Tehran time after a partial recount was conducted in an effort to mollify political opponents who charge that Ahmadinejad benefited from massive vote-rigging.

Before the announcement, security forces, including members of the pro-government Basij militia, deployed in large numbers to prevent street protests, witnesses said. But that did not stop people from taking to their rooftops to chant "Allahu akbar" (God is great) and "Death to the dictator" in a form of protest used by the popular movement that ultimately deposed the shah of Iran three decades ago. Witnesses said the chanting Monday night was louder than usual, as Tehran residents vented their anger at a government that has largely crushed street demonstrations after declaring them illegal and threatening their organizers with execution.

In a letter to Interior Minister Sadegh Mahsouli, the head of the Guardian Council said members reached their "final decision" on the election results after an extended review, Iran's state television and radio network reported.

"The Guardian Council held numerous sessions and agreed that the complaints were not valid and has now approved the soundness of the 10th presidential election," said the letter from Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati. He said that "most of the complaints were not cases of vote-rigging or electoral violation or were minor violations that might happen in every election and can be ignored." He called the election "a golden page . . . of Iran's democratic history," according to an official translation.

The recount of 10 percent of ballot boxes went ahead over the objections of two opposition presidential candidates, who demanded that the election be annulled on grounds of massive vote-rigging.

The two -- Mir Hossein Mousavi, 67, who served as prime minister for eight years in the 1980s, and Mehdi Karroubi, 71, a Shiite cleric and former speaker of parliament -- refused to participate in a special committee set up by the council to examine their complaints. Their spokesmen said that the committee would be biased and that its review would not be sufficiently broad.

A final attempt by the Guardian Council to bring Mousavi before the committee Monday also failed, for unspecified reasons, said Abbas Ali Kadkhodai, a council spokesman.

Kadkhodai later said the recount, based on a random sample of ballot boxes, took seven hours and revealed no irregularities.

"As of today, the case of the . . . election is closed in the Guardian Council," he said.

Before the council announced its findings, Karroubi, a Mousavi ally who finished last among four candidates in the official count, reiterated his call for the vote to be annulled as "the only way to regain the people's trust."

But there was no doubt that the council would reject the demand, especially given that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had already ruled out annulling the result, declared the voting clean and endorsed another four-year term for Ahmadinejad.

At a small gathering in the house of an Iranian writer, people appeared resigned about the news.

"What difference was the council going to make?" one young woman asked a group of depressed-looking friends. No one offered an answer. Instead, people listed colleagues who have been arrested since the election.

"Why would they bring him in?" one man said of a journalist who was picked up in recent days. "I don't care if I am next," another man said defiantly. "What will they do to me?"

The uncertainty of the future dominated the conversation in the smoke-filled room. Some talked about spending time in the countryside. Others were thinking of leaving Iran altogether.

"There is no future here for independent-thinking, cultured people," the writer said. "Things are going to change very rapidly from now on, for the worse."

Iranian state media say more than 650 people are detained in connection with "riots" after the election. But the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights says that more than 2,000 people have been arrested and that hundreds are missing.

On Sunday, nine Iranian employees of the British Embassy were picked up on accusations of involvement in street protests. Iranian authorities said Monday that five were released and that the others were still being questioned. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called the arrests "unacceptable" and "unjustified."

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said of the Guardian Council's action, "Obviously, they have a huge credibility gap with their own people as to the election process, and I don't think that's going to disappear by any finding of a limited review of a relatively small number of ballots." She added that "these internal matters are for Iranians themselves to address, and we hope that they will be given the opportunity to do so in a peaceful way that respects the right of expression."

Asked if the United States would recognize Ahmadinejad as the democratically elected president of Iran, Clinton told reporters, "You know, we're going to take this a day at a time. We're going to watch and carefully assess what we see happening."

Results released by the Interior Ministry on June 13 showed Ahmadinejad with nearly 63 percent of the vote, followed by Mousavi with less than 34 percent.

In an early indication Monday that the recount was unlikely to show anything other than an Ahmadinejad landslide, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said that when the ballots were counted again in one Tehran district, the incumbent had more votes than in the initial tally.

Branigin reported from Washington.