Another moderate Iranian cleric jailed by religious
court: newspaper
TEHRAN, April 4 (AFP) - A moderate Iranian cleric close to leading
dissident Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri has been jailed by order of
Iran's hardline special religious court, a pro-government newspaper reported
Sunday.
Mohammad-Ali Nejad al-Hosseini was arrested March 20 in the central
Iranian city of Esfahan, the Sobh-e-Emrouz paper reported.
Hosseini's wife told the paper that police also searched their house
and seized letters between her husband and Montazeri on orders of the
Special Court for Clergy (SCC).
Dissident cleric Montazeri has been under house arrest for several
years and last month the SCC ordered that any newspaper even mentioning
his name would be proescuted.
The elderly Montazeri was once in line to succeed then supreme leader
and founder of the Islamic republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but
fell out with the regime's religious conservatives over his liberal views
and was passed over in favour of the current supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei.
In February the hardline SCC, which operates independently of the
Iranian judiciary and reports directly to Khamenei, ordered the arrest
of another liberal cleric close to Montazeri, Mohsen Kadivar, sparking
public demonstrations and widespread outrage.
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