BEIRUT, December 28. /TASS/: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has accused the US and Western countries of igniting anti-government protests in Iran by spreading rumors and misinformation, the Al-Alam TV channel reported on Wednesday.
"The enemies of the Islamic revolution will not achieve their goals and sow discord among the Iranian people by spreading lies," he said in Tehran during a meeting with the veterans of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. "Young people are our children and all those who were misled will be welcomed by their motherland but there is no mercy for traitors," he added.
According to the Iranian president, "hypocrites, monarchists and counterrevolutionaries, that is, all those against the Islamic republic" were involved in organizing disturbances and unrest that erupted in Iran in mid-September.
On Monday, the Iranian prosecutor’s office reported that 83% of the protesters detained earlier by the police and the security services had been released by the authorities. A statement cited by the Tasnim news agency notes that "over the past three months, judges overseeing the cases of the protesters visited prisons 2,239 times and had personal conversations with the detainees."
In October and November, the Iranian authorities repeatedly granted pardons to demonstrators who took part in protest rallies in Sanandaj, the administrative center of Kurdistan, and Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchestan Province. Groups of protesters were released in the south-western province of Khuzestan, populated by Arab tribes, and in Ardabil where ethnic Azerbaijanis reside.
On December 26, the United States urged Iran to unconditionally release all protesters. US Department of State Spokesman Ned Price stressed that this is about "all people imprisoned in Iran for peacefully exercising their freedoms."
Street rallies
Iran has been gripped by protests since the funeral of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on September 16. According to the official version, this Kurdish girl was detained by the police for not wearing her headscarf properly. During an interrogation that followed, she suffered a heart attack and died. Social media, however, spread word that Amini had been beaten by the police. On October 7, the Iranian Forensic Medicine Authority published an official report on the cause of her death noting that she had not sustained any trauma.
According to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, over three months, the rallies and processions had widened to engulf 157 cities and populated localities with the protesters demanding democratic changes, condemning state repression and calling for the release of those arrested. According to the news outlet, in all, 18,500 people have been detained in Iran since mid-September. Some 507 activists and 66 members of security forces have been killed in the unrest.
