Riots continue in Tehran

PROTESTERS set fires and smashed store windows yesterday in a second day ofviolence as groups challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election tried to keep pressure onauthorities.

Anti-riot police lashed back and the regime blocked internet sites used to rally the pro-reform campaign.

Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest – the worst in a decade in Tehran – as “not important.” He said Friday’s vote was “real and free” and insisted the results showing his landslide victory were fair and legitimate.

Along Tehran’s Vali Asr street – where activists supporting rival candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi held a huge pre-election rally last week – tens of thousands marched in support of Ahmadinejad, waving Iranian flags and shouting his name.

Mousavi released his first statement since the violent protests began, calling on authorities to cancel the election.

Mousavi, who has accused authorities of election fraud, urged his supporters to continue their “civil and lawful” opposition to the results and advised police to stop violence against protesters.

Anti-riot squads have been deployed around the capital and mobile phone messaging and internet sites used by the Mousavi’s campaign have been blocked.

There’s little chance that the youth-driven movement could immediately threaten the pillars of power in Iran but it raises the possibility that a sustained and growing backlash could complicate Iran’s policies at a pivotal time.

US vice president Joe Biden said yesterday he has doubts about whether the election was free and fair. He said the US and other countries need more time to analyse the results before making a better judgment.

In Paris, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner said his country is “very worried” about the situation in Iran and criticised the Iranian authorities’ “somewhat brutal reaction” to the election protests.

Mousavi called on supporters to reject a government of “lies and dictatorship”. He has not been seen in public since a news conference shortly after polls closed.

Scores of young people shouted yesterday “Death to the dictator” and broke the windows of city buses on several streets in central Tehran. They have burned banks, trash bins and piles of tires used as flaming barricades to block police.

Riot police beat some of the protesters with batons. Shops, government offices and businesses closed early as tension mounted.

In a news conference, Ahmadinejad called the level of violence “not important from my point of view” and likened it to the intensity after a soccer match.

“Some believed they would win, and then they got angry,” he said. “It has no legal credibility. It is like the passions after a football match ... The margin between my votes and the others is too much and no one can question it.”

Ahmadinejad also accused foreign media of launching a “psychological war” against the country. Iranian authorities have asked some foreign journalists to prepare to leave.

On Saturday, Mousavi, released a web message saying he would not “surrender to this manipulation”. Authorities responded with targeted detentions.The detentions include the brother of former reformist president Mohammad Khatami and two top organisers of Iran’s largest reformist party, the Islamic Iran Participation Front: the party’s secretary-general and the head of Mousavi’s youth cyber campaign. Mohammad Reza Khatami and the two party activists were released yesterday.

Several others linked to Mousavi’s campaign remained in custody, but the full extent of the arrests were not known.