Iranian Lawmakers Call For Execution of Opposition Leaders
The New York Times reports:
A day after the largest antigovernment protests in Iran in more than a year, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Tuesday dismissed opposition attempts to revive mass demonstrations as certain to fail, while members of the Iranian Parliament clamored for the two most prominent leaders of the protest movement to be executed.
Critics have called in the past for the two men, Mir Hussein Moussavi andMehdi Karroubi, to be prosecuted for alleged crimes that would merit the death penalty. The calls for punishment on Tuesday, however, appeared to be the most strident yet — with members of Parliament shouting in unison, “Moussavi, Karroubi should be hanged!”
But while the government has tried and convicted many opposition members since large street protests in 2009, it has so far shied away from putting the two men on trial, perhaps fearing that would lead to further unrest.
