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Iran lawmaker calls for trial of oppn leaders

“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 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.

The issue remains a sensitive, polarising issue in the Islamic republic despite Ahmadinejad’s term ending in August when his successor Hassan Rohani was sworn in to office. “This crisis will not be resolved as long as one side is not allowed to speak for and defend itself, while the other side continues to mount accusations,” said Motahari, the son of a prominent revolutionary ayatollah.

“The only solution ... is the public trial of Mousavi and Karroubi, and also Ahmadinejad,” he said, arguing that the latter had mishandled the crisis. Prosecutor-General Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei however dismissed Motahari’s remarks, arguing that those who had levelled “big lies” against the establishment in 2009 had committed a “major sin”.