Iranian police have arrested some 60 people, including 20 students, in Tehran in an attempt to enforce a ban on demonstrations on the second anniversary of a violent raid on a university hostel, the Iranian Student News Agency (ISNA) said Wednesday.
The report, cited by the official Iranian news agency, IRNA, quoted Ali Ta'ali, who is in charge of security affairs at the Tehran governor-general's office.
Ta'ali said "some of the detainees were dispatching reports abroad from the site of the demonstrations."
Among the people arrested were students moving to the (central) Enqelab Square who may had been coming from the Tehran University dormitory, he told ISNA.
Ta'ali said he was not informed where the detainees were taken, adding that "the cases will be sent to judiciary soon."
Riot police were out in force outside Tehran University, a hotbed of student protests, to prevent any rallies from taking place.
Authorities banned all rallies this year, after last year's demonstrations turned violent, with clashes between protesting students and hardline vigilantes.
At the end of last week, the interior ministry said students had been given no authorization to mark the anniversary of the Tehran dorm attack, adding that "any rally would be illegal."
The pro-reform students had planned a "No to Violence Campaign" for the anniversary, which was instead marked by the presence of dozens of riot police in buses.
Between 700 and 800 people gathered inside the Tehran University dormitory complex in the western Amir-Abad district, the scene of the violent police crackdown two years ago, where members of the reformist movement made speeches condemning violence against students.
The attack on the dorm two years ago started when a group of people, some still unidentified, including plainclothes police, entered a Tehran University hostel downtown and beat up students who were protesting the closure of a pro-reform newspaper.
The incident engulfed Tehran in days of clashes in July, 1999, during which one person was killed and several others injured.
A trial was put in motion later, and several police officers, including the police chief at the time, were charged with illegally entering the campus. However, many of the accused were exonerated – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
