TEHRAN — Around 1,000 members of Iran’s Basij Islamic militia attacked offices of pro-reform cleric Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Sanei in the central shrine city of Qom, a reformist website reported on Tuesday.
The plainclothes militiamen broke the windows of Sanei’s office and insulted and beat up his staff, Norooznews.ir, the website of leading reformist party the Islamic Iran Participation Front, said.
They also put up posters of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who has been a staunch defender of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial June re-election and who ordered a post-election crackdown on opposition protests.
Police sided with the militia and prevented Sanei?s supporters from defending his office, the website said.
The report came a day after the funeral of Iran’s most revered pro-reform cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, which saw clashes between police and stone-throwing opposition protesters.
Montazeri’s family has decided to call off the traditional mourning ceremonies for his father normally stipulated by Shiite Islam for fear of further disturbances, another opposition website, Rahesabz.net, quoted his son Ahmad as saying.
“The ceremonies for the third and seventh evenings of the death of Grand Ayatollah Montazeri will not be held due to security issues,” he said.
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