Karrubi to Rouhani: Ask the Authoritarian Regime to Hold a Public Trial for Me

Mehdi Karrubi, a leader of the Green Movement, in a letter to the President of Iran published on Saturday, emphasized that he does not consider the lifting of his house arrest to be within Rouhani's power. He requested that Hassan Rouhani ask the 'authoritarian regime' to hold a 'public trial' for him to clarify who is 'ignoble.' Karrubi's use of the term 'ignoble' refers to a recent speech by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, who labeled the protesters of the 2009 election results, specifically the leaders of the Green Movement, as 'ignoble.' Karrubi wrote that a public trial would reveal which party in the 2009 election dispute was 'noble' and which was 'ignoble.' In this letter, published on Saturday, April 21, on the Saham News website, Karrubi also stated that he does not expect Rouhani to free him from house arrest, nor does he believe this is within Rouhani's authority. Lifting the house arrest of Green Movement leaders, namely Mehdi Karrubi and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who is under house arrest with his wife Zahra Rahnavard, was one of Hassan Rouhani's main electoral promises, which has yet to be fulfilled two and a half years after his election. Karrubi also described Ayatollah Khamenei as an 'authoritarian regime' and requested that Rouhani ask the Supreme Leader to hold a 'public trial' for him, 'even with the composition desired by the powers that be.' Karrubi promised that if this trial were held, he and his lawyers would present their evidence regarding 'fraud' in the 2005 presidential election and the 'engineering' of the 2009 presidential election. He also mentioned that he would describe the events that occurred to detainees during the 2009 protests 'in legal and illegal detention centers.' According to Karrubi, 'the outcome of this trial will clarify who has returned from the revolution and is ignoble and who continues the path of the revolution and is noble among the parties in the 2009 election dispute.' He stated that he would 'wholeheartedly' accept the verdict of this trial and would 'welcome it without considering the right to appeal.' Karrubi's statements seem to be a reaction to remarks made by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, who last year described the behavior of those who were not elected on March 7, 2016, as 'noble' and the behavior of the 2009 election protesters as 'ignoble.' Karrubi wrote: 'The irony is that those who sacrificed the material and spiritual assets of the country for a falsehood, the results of their insight are now clear to everyone, have become insightful and noble; while those who warned and predicted these days and have endured illegal imprisonment and house arrest for their reformist efforts over the past few years have been labeled ignoble.' This Green Movement leader emphasized in his letter that 'we must stand against the ideology that seeks a single-voiced rule through unaccountable power monopolization.' He wrote that 'let us not doubt that the delay and negligence of today's elites will incur heavy costs for the country and the people in the future.' Karrubi's comments could refer to the explicit support of Ayatollah Khamenei and his close associates for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former President of Iran. Previously, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of the Expediency Discernment Council of Iran, had also criticized the clergy's support for Ahmadinejad. Karrubi expressed happiness that the people gave a decisive answer to the totalitarians in the 2013 presidential election and the 2016 parliamentary and Assembly of Experts elections, removing some of the regime's favorites from the scene. In the March 7, 2016 elections, Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi and Mohammad Yazdi, the head of the Assembly of Experts, failed to secure a seat from Tehran, and Ahmad Jannati, the Secretary of the Guardian Council, also ranked sixteenth in this election. In response to this event, the Supreme Leader described the absence of Mohammad Taqi Mesbah Yazdi and Mohammad Yazdi in the fifth Assembly of Experts as a 'loss' for this assembly. Karrubi also referred to the disqualification of Minou Khalighi, the third elected representative from Isfahan, from entering the parliament and called the 're-examination of the qualifications' of elected representatives a 'dangerous precedent' that the government and parliament should not 'submit to.' In the latest remarks regarding Khalighi's vote status, Hossein Ali Amiri, the Deputy Minister of Interior of Iran, stated that 'assuming the Guardian Council insists' on invalidating the votes of this Isfahan representative, she can no longer enter the parliament. Karrubi also wrote about the events that occurred to him after the protests against the 2009 presidential election results: 'If in the corrupt regime of the past, Shaban Jafari was used on August 28, 1953, and June 15, 1963, in this regime, every day throughout the country, such thugs are used to attack the residences of religious authorities, critical religious and political figures, embassies, and scientific and artistic centers in the name of values.' Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karrubi, the protesters against the 2009 presidential election results, have been under house arrest without trial since February 2011. Karrubi, after three years of 'detention' in a 'safe house' of the Ministry of Intelligence, was moved to his home in Jamaran in February 2014 but remains under house arrest.