Motahari says Supreme Leader called house arrests a 'favor'
Parliament member Ali Motahari has said that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei considers the continued house arrest of the Green Movement leaders a lighter punishment than the alternative: imprisonment.
In Iran, the house arrests of three Green Movement leaders is once again top news on Iranian social media after parliament member Ali Motahari recently quoted Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the issue.
On June 17, the conservative parliamentarian and 11 others met with Ayatollah Khamenei. It was reported that Motahari asked the supreme leader if he would reconsider the ongoing house arrests of the Green Movement leaders, Mehdi Karroubi and Mir Hussein Mousavi and Mousavi's wife Zahra Rahnavard.
The three have been held under house arrest without charge since February 2011. After the contested 2009 elections, Reformist candidates Mousavi and Karroubi led the largest street protests seen in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The protests, which authorities later admitted caught them by surprise, led to a crackdown that resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of arrests.
“In my opinion and many other individuals', the continuation of the house arrests of Mousavi and Karroubi is not to the benefit of the country and the revolution, and is not necessary,” Motahari told Ayatollah Khamenei in the meeting. “If one of these two, in this condition, leave this world, the issue will be like a festering tumor for the Islamic Republic.” Both Mousavi and Karroubi have been hospitalized for chronic health conditions since their house arrests.
