Latest Iranian protests reverberates onlines

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he Associated Press reports: “More than 100 opposition political activists and protesters stood trial in Tehran Saturday on charges of rioting and conspiring to topple the ruling system,” according to Iranian state media. A reader sent us a link to images published today on Farsnews.net with this comment: “Revolutionary Guards ‘news agency’ displays photographs of the show trial today.”

On Fars’ English-language site, the state-supported news agency reported that a prosecutor told the court that “the post-election frenzy in Iran” was incited by foreign media outlets. According to Fars, the prosecutor, identified only by his last name, Mohabbati, said: “It should be noted that foreign media, including BBC Persian, VOA, Al-Arabia, Radio Farda and Radio Zamaneh, have played a salient role in training (rioters) and provoking illegal gatherings and unrest.”

The same report says that the prosecutor presented what he said were incriminating remarks made by Maziar Bahari, a reporter for Newsweek who was detained by Iranian authorities after the election, suggesting that the western media decided before the vote took place to report that the election was fraudulent.

A new article by my colleagues Robert Worth and Nazila Fathi has many more details on the trial in Tehran, including this: “The only media organization allowed to cover the trial was the semiofficial Fars news agency, which has links to the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.”

Original Post | Friday | 5:32 p.m. On Friday, one day after opposition supporters took to Iran’s streets again to protest the June 12 presidential election, Iranian bloggers pointed to video and photographs that they say document abuses by the security forces and continuing defiance by the protesters.

Readers drew our attention to the two video clips embedded below. Both clips were uploaded to YouTube on Friday by an anonymous blogger who said they were shot during Thursday’s protests in Tehran and show members of the pro-government Basij militia beating and shooting bullets or tear gas at opposition supporters.

This video seems to show members of the Basij on a motorcycle apprehending and beating a protester:

The blogger who uploaded these clips says that the video embedded below was shot near the same location as the first video, and shows a shot being fired near the end:

On Thursday, The Lede pointed to another video, which was apparently shot yesterday during a memorial service for Sohrab Aarabi, a 19-year-old protester who was killed on June 15, at his grave in Tehran’s Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery. A Farsi-speaking colleague has provided The Lede with a partial translation of some remarks made during that memorial service by Mr. Aarabi’s mother.

In the video, embedded below, Mr. Aarabi’s mother thanks the people present for coming and says, in reference to young Sohrab and other protesters who have been killed: “Our sons have been murdered. They all died in the name of freedom. The people who killed them were cowards.”

After mentioning some of the other opposition supporters who have been killed, Mr. Aarabi’s says, in part:

They all died in the name of freedom. They went into a non-violent demonstration and they got killed. History will show that their blood will not be wasted. Our sons have not died; they are still alive; they are here with us and everybody knows they were killed for no reason.

Here is the video, which was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday:

Also on Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that privately owned German company, Knauf Gips KG, involved in the construction industry in Iran had sent a letter to employees threatening to dismiss them if they participated in anti-government protests.

According to the report by Farnaz Fassihi and Matthew Karnitschnig published in Friday’s Journal:

Iran’s government pressured Knauf to issue the order after a senior executive was arrested during Friday prayer demonstrations two weeks ago, according to people familiar with the case. The company, which has 22,000 employees around the world, was told that such a letter would be a condition for the executive’s release. [...]

The employee at the center of the Knauf controversy is a 34-year-old dual national of Germany and Iran and heads the company’s Iran operation. He was released four days after Knauf agreed to issue the order but faces trial, according to the company and others.

Isabel Knauf, a founding-family member who is on the supervisory board of the Iran operation, signed a letter that was circulated confidentially to its hundreds of Iranian employees on July 21.

“We would like to remind all of our employees to remember that they are not only representing their private opinion when being politically active, but their actions could fall back negatively on our Knauf companies in Iran,” said the letter, which was reviewed by the Journal. “Therefore, from now on, if anybody from our company gets caught demonstrating against the current government, he or she will be immediately dismissed.”

Later on Friday, after The Journal published its report, and posted a copy of the letter on its Web site, the firm “withdrew the threat,” according to a follow-up report on WSJ.com.