Iran puts leading reformers on trial

A prosecutor yesterday de-manded "maximum punishment" for a senior reformer accused of acting against national security, a crime punishable by death, in Iran's fourth mass trial of moderates since a disputed election.

Saeed Hajjarian, disabled since an assassination attempt in 2000, was among several prominent opposition figures in the dock charged with fomenting huge street protests that followed the June presidential election.

The poll plunged Iran into its most serious internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, exposing deep divisions in its ruling elite and further straining ties with the West.

"The prosecutor... called for maximum punishment for Hajjarian considering the importance of the case," the official Irna news agency reported.

Analysts regard the trials as an attempt by the authorities to uproot the moderate opposition and put an end to protests that erupted after the election, which defeated candidates say was rigged in favour of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Several of the accused are members of Iran's leading reformist party, Mosharekat, whose website denounced the latest Revolutionary Court session as another show trial forming part of what it called an "ugly scenario".

It said some 200 relatives of those on trial gathered outside the court and that police failed to disperse them.

At the same trial in Tehran, the state broadcaster said Iranian-American scholar Kian Tajbakhsh was accused of acting against national security and of espionage, a charge likely to anger Washington.