TEHRAN (Reuters) – Former President Mohammad Khatami on Wednesday denounced as “invalid” confessions made by detainees at a mass trial of moderates accused of fomenting post-election unrest, the ILNA news agency reported.
At Tuesday’s trial, senior reformer and Khatami ally Saeed Hajjarian was reported as saying he had “made major mistakes during the election by presenting incorrect analyses…and I apologize to the Iranian nation for those mistakes.”
In a statement issued by his office a day after Iran began a fourth such trial since the disputed June election, leading reformist Khatami said, according to ILNA: “These confessions are invalid and have been obtained under extraordinary conditions … such claims are sheer lies and false.”
The June 12 vote has plunged Iran into its most serious internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and has exposed deep divisions in the establishment’s ruling elite.
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