Conspiracy Trial for 100 Dissidents Begins in Iran
New York Times / Robert F. Worth & Nazila Fathi
02-Aug-2009

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The Iranian authorities opened an extraordinary mass trial against more than 100 opposition figures on Saturday, accusing them of conspiring with foreign powers to stage a revolution through terrorism, subversion, and a media campaign to discredit last month’s presidential election.

The trial, coming just days before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to be sworn in for a second term, signaled an intensified government attack on the opposition movement, which maintains that the June 12 election was rigged and continues to muster widespread street protests.

The accusations read out in the courtroom were a broadside against virtually every major figure associated with reform in Iran, going well beyond those actually arrested. State television broadcast images of the defendants, who included a former vice president and a Newsweek reporter, as well as some of the reform movement’s best-known spokesmen, clad ... >>>

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