SEVERAL STUDENTS LEADERS ARRESTED
By an IPS Correspondent
TEHRAN 26 Nov. (IPS) Three leading students activists have been arrested Tuesday morning by unidentified plain-clothe men, according to informed students sources in Tehran.
Mr. Abdollah Mo’meni, a student’s leader of the Office of Consolidating Unity (OCU), Iranian students largest pro-reform organisation was abducted by two men near his residence, students sources said, adding that a friend who was with Mr. Mo’meni had been sprayed with gas by the abductors.
At about the same time, plain-clothe men, who refused to identify themselves, arrested another student activist, Mr. Akbar Atri,a former leader of the OCU at his office in Tehran.
Amir Hoseyn Balali, also a student leader, had been also reported arrested, eventually by the same people.
It was not known whether the abductions took place on orders of the Judiciary or was the action of some of the pressure groups that are on the payroll of the ruling conservatives.
Observers noted that all three students had been very vocal in the three weeks of student’s protests; often speaking with foreign based Persian service radio stations like the BBC, the VOA, the Radio Free Europe or Radio France Internationale.
Abducting dissident and activists in the Islamic Republic is a common matter. Mr. Siamak Poorzand, a veteran and old journalist, was the last political activist that was abducted by the pressure groups.
The arrest came shortly after the authorities had announced a total ban on all demonstrations, pending the Judiciary’s handling of the death verdict imposed on Dr. Hashem Aqajari, the university professor charged with blasphemy.
The verdict triggered a wave of students and popular unrest in Iran, forcing Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i, the leader of the Islamic Republic to order the Judiciary to review the verdict.
But at the same time, he also warned the students to stop their movement or he would call in what he named as "popular forces", meaning the basij volunteers and thugs of the Ansar Hezbollah.
Mr. Aqajari has stated that he would not appeal to the verdict, and a Judiciary source warned Tuesday that if the Islamist thinker do not appeal within 20 days, the verdict would beome irrevocable. ENDS STUDENTS ARRESTS 261102