Reformist website adds five deaths to post-vote toll
Source: Reuters
TEHRAN, Sept 7 (Reuters) - A reformist website named five more people on Monday who it said were killed in the street protests that erupted after Iran's disputed election in June. Citing opposition figures which last week put the number of dead in post-election unrest at 72, Mowjcamp.com listed what it said were five newly identified people killed in the violence. The authorities, who have blamed the opposition for the bloodshed, say at least 26 people were killed including several members of the pro-government Islamic Basij militia. They have dismissed the opposition figures as baseless. But reformists continue to challenge official accounts, and Mowjcamp.com said "new information indicates that the number of the martyrs can rise above 100." It did not give a source. It said the five newly identified dead -- four men and a woman -- included a student activist in the southeastern province of Kerman killed by a blow to the back of the head. The bodies of two men and a woman killed in Tehran were handed over to their relatives in the northern province of Golestan, the website said, adding that another student had been killed in the central city of Yazd. The election, which was followed by huge opposition protests, plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution. The opposition says it was rigged to secure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election. Officials deny this. Defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi has said some protesters were raped and abused in detention. Authorities have rejected the accusation but ordered the closure of a detention centre south of Tehran. Officials have also said there was unnecessary violence in a raid on a Tehran university dormitory shortly after the June 12 election. Ahmadinejad appeared to blame the opposition for some of these incidents. "We have documents and evidence showing links between the group behind the riots and some incidents that happened in the university dormitory and some detention centres," he told a news conference on Monday.
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