15 student leaders arrested in Tehran

Police at Tehran University

Fifteen members of central council of the student organization Unity Consolidation Bureau have been arrested by security forces today in Tehran. The detainees have been taken to an unknown location and so far no announcements concerning their charges have been released.

Prior to the opening of the fall university term, the Revolutionary Guards and security forces as well as the Supreme Leader himself had warned students to stay away from protests. The establishment has described student protests and their demands for reform as a tool of foreign conspiracies to undermine the government. The teaching of humanities has been portrayed as a threat to the rule of Velayat-e Faqih represented by Ayatollah Khamenei, a pretext which many feel will result in the dismissing of progressive faculty members.

Despite warnings, Tehran and Sharif Universities have been sites of several protests in the past weeks. Students have protested the presence of the Minister of Science at their opening ceremonies. Kamran Danshejou, the current Science minister, acted as the head of election headquarters in the June presidential elections. Hundreds of students participated in last week’s protests revealing the persistence of election protests.

Unity Consolidation student organization in a recent statement announced that protesters should refrain from any violence since “authorities” intend to “divert the protest movement” by forcing them into physical confrontation.

In the past 100 days, numerous university students who had protested to the outcome of the elections have been arrested. In the first days of the protests following the June presidential election, a group of plainclothes officials attacked Tehran University dormitory beating and injuring many students.

Ahmad Zeidabadi, Executive Director of Dasesh Amoukhtegan Organization (alumni of Unity Consolidation) and its spokesman, Abdollah Momeni, have been in prison since the beginning of the recent protests. Abdollah Momeni was presented in the fifth session of the mass trial of election protesters making self-incriminatory confessions as many other prominent reformists had done in previous sessions of the trial.

Abdollah Momeni

Unity Consolidation Bureau has condemned the broadcast of Mr. Momeni’s declarations in court which include charges against the Union of Iranian Islamic Students Associations.

Amir Kabir Newsletter cites the statement from the Unity Consolidation Bureau saying; “Nothing can better confirm that you have tortured Mr. Momeni and fabricated this confession than the fact that in a matter of one night you have coerced this man, who has shone for years in his defense of human rights, to deny and destroy himself, and forced him to invalidate all his struggles for human rights, so that students and all protesters would learn that fighting for people’s rights is an enemy conspiracy deserving of punishment!”

The statement goes on to say that: “those who have violated the people’s rights, stolen the nation’s votes and spilled the people’s blood on the streets are the true enemies of the nation,” and these “oppressors” are warned that “by denying the gravity of the crimes committed against the people and students, and by resorting to policies such as suspending students from dormitories and threatening them in disciplinary committees and courts of injustice, they will only get the kinds of results that came about from their acts of murder, torture, fabricating confessions and building infamous detentions centres such as Kahrizak.”

Kahrizakk detention centre was used to keep some of the post-election detainees but was closed down by the order of the Supreme Leader after reports of torture and murder made it a public relations liability. Authorities maintain that Kahrizak violations were arbitrary and ten officials have allegedly been arrested in connection with the crimes. Their identities are not yet released.