TEHRAN, (Reuters) – Iran’s new judiciary chief has replaced a hardline prosecutor who played a key role in the mass trials of leading reformers arrested over unrest that erupted after the disputed presidential election in June.
In another move that may be welcomed by moderates, the IRNA news agency said judiciary chief Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani had ordered a probe into allegations by pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi that some opposition protesters were raped in jail.
IRNA, Iran’s official news agency, said late on Saturday that Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi had been replaced by Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi. The same news agency later said Mortazavi had been appointed deputy prosecutor general.
It was unclear if it would have affect the mass trials of more than 100 senior pro-reform figures, activists and others charged with inciting post-election protests. Four trials began in Tehran this month but sentences have not yet been announced.
The election and its turbulent aftermath have plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening establishment divisions.
Judiciary sources told Reuters that Larij“supervisory board” to look into the post-election events, including the situation at the Kahrizak jail south of Tehran, where many protesters were held and where at least three people died in custody.
It would also investigate the rape allegations raised by Karoubi this month, which have angered hardliners and which officials have rejected as “baseless.”
Larijani is a brother of parliament speaker Ali Larijani, who ran against hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential election. Defeated candidates say this year’s presidential vote, in which Ahmadinejad won re-election for a second four-year term, was rigged. The authorities reject the accusation. ani, who was appointed in mid-August, had made Mortazavi’s replacement a condition for accepting the judiciary chief post.
IRNA said Larijani had also formed a
