Khatami expresses support to jailed Tehran mayor

Khatami expresses support to jailed Tehran mayor

TEHRAN (Agencies): Iran's moderate President Mohammad Khatami has joined the groundswell of support for jailed former Tehran mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschi, the press reported on Sunday.

"Karbaschi has rendered much service to the country... we regret that we are deprived of his services for the time being," Khatami told Karbaschi's wife in a telephone conversation on Saturday.

Khatami also praised Karbaschi's revolutionary record against the shah's regime before 1979 and said he hoped the 45-year-old former cleric would "emerge from the present test with honors."

Karbaschi began serving a two-year jail sentence for corruption and misuse of public funds on Thursday despite last- ditch efforts by supporters to stop him going to jail.

His trial was widely seen among moderates as a politically- motivated attack by conservatives and hardliners against the reformist agenda pursued by Khatami since he took office in August 1997.

Former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, still a powerful figure as the top advisor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also sent a letter to Karbaschi expressing his "regret" over the case.

And Rafsanjani's daughter, the moderate MP Faezeh Hashemi, raised hopes that her father could step in to help Karbaschi, who was appointed by Rafsanjani himself in 1989 to restore a city devastated by years of war and neglect.

"Karbaschi is one of the government's successful managers known as a symbol of productivity in Tehran and we can expect Rafsanjani to intervene in his case," Hashemi told moderate newspaper Sobh-e-Emrouz.

"We can not say that Rafsanjani has not defended Karbaschi ... Rafsanjani believes in operating behind curtains so that his efforts can be realized," she added.

Some 149 government officials and MPs have also sent a letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asking him to pardon Karbaschi, according to Salam newspaper.

Karbaschi's lawyer Bahman Keshavarz said on Saturday he expected a review of the verdict and expressed hope his client would not remain in prison "for even two months."

But Entekhab newspaper quoted the judge in charge of retrials on Sunday as saying the chances of a review were "very slim."

Meanwhile, Iranian fundamentalists disrupted a demonstration by moderate students on Sunday over the jailing of a liberal cleric accused of spreading propaganda hostile to the Islamic regime.

Around 700 students gathered at Tehran university to call for the release of Mohsen Kadivar, a leading light of the reform movement in Iran who began an 18-month jail term last month.

But scuffles broke out when around 40 militant fundamentalists turned up, shouting "death to Kadivar" and "Kadivar must be executed."

Police were not allowed to enter the university grounds but arrested several people from both groups as they left the campus.

The students, from Iran's biggest moderate university movement, rallied inside the university gates in support of Kadivar, jailed last month after questioning the conservative establishment's interpretation of clerical authority under Islam. "Arrest us, too. We think like Kadivar," read one placard.

The students said earlier they would rally outside the gates. However, officials were reported to have denied their application for a permit, forcing them to remain on campus.

Organizers said the protest was planned to stretch into the late afternoon.

Kadivar, an outspoken mid-ranking Shi'ite Moslem cleric, has angered traditionalists with lectures and articles stressing limits on clerical power over Iran's political system. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail by a special court dealing with offenses by clerics.

His supporters say his arrest and conviction were designed to stifle free speech and block fresh interpretations of Shi'ite political thought. They say the court had no jurisdiction over "thought crimes".

But Iran's conservative judiciary chief recently denied there were political motives behind the case.