Iranian government officials warned Wednesday that they would seek the death penalty for detainees who have been arrested for organizing post-election opposition rallies in Tehran and elsewhere around the country.
The Iranian Fars news agency quoted Mohammadreza Habibi, an Iranian provincial prosecutor as saying the "few elements" behind the unrest could face the death penalty under Islamic law. The prosecutor-general of the central province of Esfahan said "these few elements" were controlled from outside the country and warned them to stop their "criminal activities."
Government forces continued to attack Iranian demonstrators protesting irregularities in Friday's presidential election. Warning: The video below is graphic and shows specific images of the results of the violence, including beatings and shotgun wounds, that may be disturbing.
Nevertheless, thousands of Iranians planned to protest for a fifth day in the capital against the skewed results of an election they insist was rigged against challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, a former president, in defiance of a government ban on all demonstrations. The election results announced by government officials had showed incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad with an almost 2 to 1 victory over Mousavi barely two hours after the polls closed, even in Mousavi's own hometown. Numerous polling locations had reported irregularities as well.
Obama: 'Very Little Difference' Between the Two
Despite the post-election upheaval wracking the Islamic Republic in response to the results, however, there actually appears to be very little difference between Ahmadinejad and his "moderate" challenger, Mousavi, according to U.S. President Barack Obama.
In an interview Tuesday with CNBC News, the American president said, "It's important to understand that although there is amazing ferment taking place in Iran, the difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised."
"Either way we were going to be dealing with an Iranian regime that has historically been hostile to the United States, that has caused some problems in the neighborhood and has been pursuing nuclear weapons," he said.
Meanwhile, mammoth demonstrations continued in the Iranian capital on Wednesday and grew in intensity elsewhere around the country as well. In Esfahan, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators packed into Naghshe Jahan Square to protest the disputed election results that had named Ahmadinejad the winner last Friday.
"Keep fighting! Don't give up, don't surrender! Another chance like this with such great power of a gathered people may not come again for decades…" wrote one person on the Twitter social networking internet blog site.
"Hospital workers in Tehran: Basij [Ahmadinejad's personal militia forces] collect all bodies from ERs and make them disappear; can't we even bury our dead?" lamented another writer in a redirected "tweet" from Iran.
Numerous others, writing from North America to encourage the protestors, likened the civil unrest to the American Revolution: "The American people are behind you, men and women of Persia. As we were in 1776, so you are in 2009," wrote one. "Seize the liberty your bravery deserves."
According to a report filed for The Independent by Australian correspondent Robert Fisk, a transformation is slowly taking place in some of the military forces in the country; individual soldiers, and perhaps higher-echelon officials in the military, appear to have decided to withdraw support from Ahmadinejad's Basij militia.
"In fact at one point, Mousavi's supporters were shouting 'thankyou, thank you' to the soldiers," Fisk wrote in a story filed Wednesday in defiance of the Iranian government ban on foreign reports from the Iranian streets. "One woman went up to the special forces men, who normally are very brutal with Mr. Mousavi's supporters, and said, 'Can you protect us from the Basij?' He said 'with God's help'."
Fisk noted "the actual authorities are losing control of what's happening on the streets" and observed, "That's very dangerous and damaging to them." He added that participants at a demonstration supporting Ahmadinejad had shouted, "Death to the traitor" and pointed out, "They meant Mousavi."
Most important to recognize, however, said Fisk, is the fact that the entire protest is not geared against the Islamic Republic, nor against the Islamic Revolution, but rather aimed at Ahmadinejad himself. "It's clearly an Islamic protest against specifically the personality, the manner, the language of Ahmadinejad. They absolutely despise him but they do not hate or dislike the Islamic republic that they live in," he said.