Dozens arrested in Tehran protests.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/02/15/3138840.htm


Dozens arrested in Tehran protests

Updated 49 minutes ago


Dozens of Iranian opposition supporters were arrested overnight while taking part in a banned rally in Tehran to support popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, an Iranian opposition website said.

"Witnesses say in some parts of Tehran security forces arrested dozens of protesters," opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi's Kaleme website reported.

Security forces fired teargas to scatter thousands of opposition supporters marching toward a Tehran square, a witness said.

There were also clashes between police and demonstrators, resulting in dozens of arrests, in Isfahan in central Iran, the country's third largest city, another witness told Reuters.

The rallies amounted to a test of strength for the reformist opposition, which had not taken to the streets since Dec. 2009, when eight people were killed.

Large numbers of police wearing riot gear and security forces were stationed around the main squares of the capital and pairs of state militiamen roamed the streets on motorbikes.

There were minor clashes at some points across the sprawling capital city of some 12 million people, witnesses said. Mobile telephone connections were down in the area of the protests.

"There are thousands of people marching ... Security forces fired tear gas to disperse them near Imam Hossein square," one witness said earlier in the day.

"Death to the dictator," some of the protesters chanted, though in other places, demonstrators marched in silence.

The demonstrators marched towards Azadi (Freedom) Square, a traditional rallying point for protests in central Tehran dominated by a huge white marble arch. Hundreds of marchers also gathered in Isfahan and Shiraz, witnesses said.

But security forces surrounded the Tehran houses of opposition leaders Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi preventing them and Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard from joining the march, their websites said.

"Mirhossein Mousavi and Zahra Rahnavard are still trying to leave their house and join the protests... but security forces are preventing them. Security forces have even threatened Mousavi's guards to not allow them to leave the house by any means," the Mousavi's Kalame website said.

Mr Mousavi and Mr Karroubi took advantage of official Iranian backing for the huge street protests in Egypt and Tunisia to call their own demonstrations in solidarity, but authorities refused their request.

The opposition nevertheless renewed the call for the rally.

Iranian authorities have warned the opposition to avoid creating a "security crisis" by reviving protests that erupted after the vote, the biggest unrest in Iran since the 1979 revolution.

Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia an "Islamic awakening", akin to the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed shah.

But the opposition see the unrest as being more similar to their own protests following the June 2009 election which they say was rigged in favour of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Revolutionary Guards, fiercely loyal to Khamenei, put down the 2009 protests. Two people were hanged and scores of opposition supporters jailed. Tweet