Karroubi calls for more tolerance from Iranian government

Mehdi Karroubi visiting Alireza Beheshti's family

Iranian opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi criticized Islamic Republic authorities for continued arrest of dissidents and urged them to show greater tolerance.

Kalameh Website reports that Mehdi Karroubi visited the family of Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, imprisoned senior adviser of MirHosein Mousavi.

Karroubi condemned the government strategy to pressure the disputing candidate of the 2009 presidential elections, MirHosein Mousavi, through the arrest of his senior aides.

He stressed: “The Revolution and the Islamic Republic is not what these gentlemen are carrying out and it is our duty to return the Islamic Republic to its right path.”

Alireza Beheshti Shirazi, who was once arrested in the early days of protests following the June presidential elections, was released only to be arrested shortly after again in December and is still in prison.

Mehdi Karroubi also visited Ahmad Motamedi, the Minister of Communications in Mohammad Khatami’s reform government, at the hospital.

Motamedi was stabbed at his workplace at Amir Kabir University by a fifty-year-old man.

His wife, Fatemeh Azhdari threatened to reveal “the truth” if "wrongful" reports regarding the attack on his husband’s life continue.

Azhdar maintains that they are trying to reduce the “assassination attempt” against her husband to a crime with “personal motivations.”

She condemned the national broadcasting Seda va Sima’s coverage of the incident saying: “I swear that if they do not rectify the wrongful coverage of this matter, I will speak out the truth.”