Karroubi insists Iran's presidential elections were rigged

Mehdi Karroubi

Mehdi Karroubi, Iranian opposition leader once more confirmed his contention that the “election fraud was widespread” in the last presidential elections.

Saham news reports that in a recent meeting with reformist youth, Karroubi said: “They accuse us of being sore losers but there are certain facts that prove us right.”

He said: “Not only there was an election fraud well beyond the one or two million number, but the fate of the election was previously set.”

He added: “We have sufficient reasons for these allegations and we will discuss all of them in the debate which we have long called for in order to clarify all matters.”

Karroubi went on to say that the Guardian Council’s role has not been impartial and accused it of “betraying the people’s votes.”

He insisted that if the Guardian Council were indeed impartial then it would agree to a public debate between the challengers of the election and government officials.

Mehdi Karroubi also said that he is in the process of preparing a study of the elections of the past twenty years “to reveal how in the past 20 years and after the death of his Excellency the Imam (Khomeini) certain movements began to oppress certain other movements until it came to this where it has reached its apex.”

He added: “The issues that I am presenting are not merely to criticize the opposite camp and some of the criticisms will also include the election practices of the reformist camp.”

Mehdi Karroubi has repeated his challenge of the latest elections despite the fact that Ayatollah Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, announced in June 2009 that the allegations of election fraud are only brought up by “enemies” of Iran.