Motahari: The President Has a Duty to Pursue the Issue of Lifting House Arrest

Ali Motahari, a representative from Tehran in the Islamic Consultative Assembly, has urged Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran, to act on Mehdi Karroubi's request for a public trial. In an interview with ILNA news agency on Tuesday, April 30, Motahari emphasized the President's role in resolving the issue of house arrest, stating, "The President, both as the executor of the Constitution and as the head of the Supreme National Security Council, has a duty to pursue this matter." He referred to a recent letter from Mehdi Karroubi, a leader of the 2009 protests in Iran, highlighting the main issue mentioned in the letter was his request for a public trial in a competent court. Karroubi, in his letter published on Saturday, April 21, on the Saham News website, emphasized that he does not consider the lifting of his house arrest to be within Rouhani's control and urged the President to ask the "tyrannical regime" to put him on trial in a "public court" to clarify who is "dishonorable." The term "dishonorable" refers to a recent speech by Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, who labeled the 2009 election protesters and specifically the leaders of the Green Movement as "dishonorable." Motahari reiterated that house arrest without a judicial order is illegal and stated that lifting the house arrest is not related to the specific conditions of the country. He added, "The argument that if a trial is held, the verdict will be harsh, so it is better not to hold it, cannot be logical; because the arguments and defenses must be heard to determine what factors led to such behaviors and who was the initiator. This would naturally lessen their accusations." Motahari insisted that all influential factors in the 2009 protests, including certain government institutions, the former President, and the leaders of those protests, should be tried together in a competent public court, and whatever the verdict, all should accept it to close this case. In his recent letter to the President, Karroubi promised that if this trial is held, he and his lawyers will present their reasons regarding the "fraud" in the 2005 presidential election and the "engineering of the elections" in 2009. He stated that he would accept the verdict from this court "with all his heart" and would welcome it "without considering the right to appeal." Mir Hossein Mousavi, Zahra Rahnavard, and Mehdi Karroubi, who protested the results of the 2009 presidential election, have been under house arrest without trial since February 2011. Lifting their house arrest was one of Hassan Rouhani's key electoral promises, which has yet to be fulfilled two and a half years into his presidency.