TEHRAN, Iran — The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the disputed June 12 presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come away from the crowds through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human-rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have put dozens of the country’s most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars.
The Iranian government says only that unspecified figures responsible for fomenting unrest have been taken into custody.
The arrests have drained the pool of potential leaders of a protest movement that contends President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election by fraud. They also point to the potential for high-profile trials — and serious sentences — before a special judicial forum created to handle cases from the unrest.
With the main reformist candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi, under constant police surveillance, protests demanding a new vote have withered.
Some of the people rounded up during demonstrations have been released within days. But most of those detained in raids remain in custody. That has spread fear among Mousavi supporters and left the opposition movement reeling.
“We heard some news about people who are arrested at night and we are worried if it could happen to us,” a Tehran resident active in the protests wrote in an e-mail Friday, asking for anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
At least 230 more students, professors, journalists and reformists have been arrested, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. At least 29 are known to have been released, the New York-based organization said Wednesday.
Among the most prominent reformists detained was Ebrahim Yazdi, 78, who was a key aide of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and served as foreign minister after the 1979 revolution.
Yazdi was hospitalized with a bladder problem when agents walked into his room June 17, had his intravenous tubes disconnected and took him to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. He was released the next day.
“They did not show any judicial or legal papers, nothing,” Yazdi told The Associated Press by telephone from Teh ran.
“Even in prison they didn’t interrogate me. Nobody came to tell me why they were arresting me.”
