Iran militants deface home of opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi

While police looked on, for example, Ms. Ebadi’s home and offices were targeted by vigilantes on Jan. 1, 2009, with red and black graffiti, aimed at unsettling Iran’s best-known human rights lawyer. “Ebadi, death to the witch of America,” it read, and accused her of serving as a “pen of the enemy.”

Of the dozens of protesters shown in the street outside Karroubi’s residence on Sunday, several women held up printed posters that charged the two-time former parliament speaker with working for Israeli intelligence: “The illiterate Karroubi, Mossad’s agent.”

Another poster stated that protesters were from the “Public Headquarters for Following Up Punishment of the Heads of Sedition.” The women carried portraits of Iran’s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.

Borna and the Fars News Agency, which has links to the elite Revolutionary Guard, identified the protesters as “students and families of martyrs” of the Iraq-Iraq War of the 1980s. Borna reported that the protesters demanded that Karroubi – a former head of Iran’s large Martyr’s Foundation – be defrocked and put on trial.

Since the summer, Karroubi has compiled testimony and made allegations about rape, torture and serious that took place in Iran’s prisons and detention centers during the unrest. The charges – and deaths of some protesters in custody – electrified Iran’s ruling elite.

“The demonstrators in a statement asked Karroubi to repent, otherwise the heads of the sedition would be caught by the Imam and the martyrs’ curse and the wrath of the hezbollahi nation,” Borna reported. “They announced their readiness to sacrifice their lives on the path of the [Supreme Leader].”

Politicized martyrs

Mrs. Karroubi said it was the wrong time to make politics of the memory of the martyrs, who fought in what many Iranians consider a sacred war against Iraq.

“Exploiting and defaming in the name of martyrs’ families is an unforgivable atrocity some corrupt people in the government have resorted to in recent years,” she wrote in her web posting.

“I advise the wise people of the ruling [conservatives] to avoid such primitive methods and not to worsen the situation,” Mrs. Karroubi said, adding that she had a number of damaging details to disclose if such pressure continued. “I assure them that I would have infinite points to tell people who are the genuine confidantes of the revolution, if they continue this ignorant approach.”

The incident comes as Iranians prepare on Tuesday night to celebrate Charshanbe Soori, an ancient fire-jumping festival in which Iranians have for centuries – long before the advent of Islam in the seventh century – prepared themselves for the advent of the Persian New Year, which begins this weekend.

Traditionally, families and friends make fires in the streets and jump over them, and let off firecrackers and explosions. In the past, local authorities have helped organize events.

But wary that the street party could turn into another Green Movement protest – as has taken place during a number of pro-regime rallies in recent months – this year the top decisionmaker in Iran said it was un-Islamic.

The ritual has “no basis” in Islamic law and “creates a lot of harm and corruption, [so] it is appropriate to avoid it,” Ayatollah Khamenei said on his website.

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