Dissidents claim PMOI links, Iran says

TEHRAN, July 13 (UPI) -- Iranian prosecutors said Monday that detained seditionists who claimed ties to the dissident People's Mujahedin of Iran were behind post-election violence.

Iran has witnessed violent protests in the wake of the June 12 presidential election that secured a disputed second term for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Officials claim dozens of deaths among the protests, which are some of the most violent in Iran in decades.

Iran has blamed a litany of outside agents, from the American CIA to the staff at the British Embassy in Tehran, for the post-election fallout.

Ali Eftekhari, a deputy prosecutor in the northern Iranian province of Qazvin, said seven suspects have confessed to close affiliation with the PMOI, the state-funded broadcaster Press TV reports.

"With the main goal of destabilizing the country, they had lured the young and innocent into joining the anti-government riots," the prosecutor said.

Eftekhari maintained the PMOI was seeking to exploit the political unrest in Iran to advocate its aim of replacing the clerical regime in Iran.

The dissident PMOI emerged from the Islamic Revolution as an anti-government guerrilla organization that conducted several high-profile assassinations of top Iranian leaders in the 1980s. Its members at their Camp Ashraf enclave in Iraq surrendered to American forces in 2003 and now claim peaceful opposition as their tactic.

The PMOI is listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. It denies any role in the post-election violence.