Iranian prosecutors warn against dissent

TEHRAN, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- An Iranian prosecutor warned Monday that anyone criticizing a massive trial of 100 government opponents as illegitimate would be prosecuted.

The Tehran prosecutor's warning came shortly before segments aired on state-supported Iranian television in which two defendants said they "changed" since being arrested and disputed claims their publicized confessions were coerced, The New York Times reported.

Press TV, the state-backed, English-language broadcaster, also reported Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election victory at a ceremony in Tehran Monday, a pre-requisite to Ahmadinejad's inauguration. Khamenei already gave public support to Ahmadinejad's victory in the June 12 election that the opposition has called fraudulent.

The two men who appeared in the broadcast were Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former vice president and blogger, and Muhammad Atrianfar, a former deputy interior minister. The alleged confession by Abtahi was the basis for prosecutors' arguments against reformers.

Abtahi was quoted as saying that the opposition's claims of a fraudulent election were false, and that opposition leaders conspired in advance to misrepresent the vote, the Times reported.

"(The) confession has opened the way to dealing with the leaders of the unrest," Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reported one lawmaker as saying. "There is no longer any reason to tolerate or compromise."

Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has called the trial "unconstitutional," saying it would damage public trust in the country's government, Press TV reported.

Family members of the defendants issued a statement denouncing the confessions, the reformist newspaper Etemad Melli reported.

"Not only do we not accept the confession, we also know that Abtahi said these things due to a long period of imprisonment for the purpose of obtaining a confession," the statement said.