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14:03 We agreed that you will stop chanting. If we do not have the votes of the people behind us, we will have nothing. The guardian council, the expediency council, EVERYONE gets their legitimacy from the vote of the people.

14:09 I have some suggestions. I have spoken to some members of the the expediency council and the assembly of experts about them too.14:10 We must bring back the trust of the people. First of all, everyone must accept the law. The people, the parliament, everyone.14:11 We must create a condition so that everyone can speak. We must speak logically. And a part of this is on the shoulders of the broadcasting corporation.14:12 The guardian council did not make good use of the extra fives days given to them by the leader.14:13 We do not need people in prison for this. Let’s allow them to return to their families.14:14 We must join hands with those who have incurred great loss and try to lesson their pain.14:15 We must give freedom to the press within the confines of the law.14:15 We are all members of the same family. We must remain friends and allies. Why have we gone so far as to pain some of our marajeh [top religious leaders]?14:16 I hope this sermon will pave a way out of this current situation. A situation that can be considered a crisis.14:17 The sermon is finished.

Hundreds of Basij have set up camp in Laleh park, which seems to be pretty close to the epicenter. Some fires still burning.

The phones are completely out.

squads of 25 police would run up the streets with batons beating people

Saw two undercover Basij, one was actually a late 40s businessman in a suit, whipped out a collapsible metal baton and started beating someone with a camera. He was beaten until the baton broke, another Basij came on motorcycle to help but crowds started surging and booed them away. Someone threw a water bottle but otherwise crowd is peaceful — keep chanting “Please Stop!” and chased the two Basij away.

“I did shoot at people myself. I am a military man I have to obey my orders. The crowd was attacking us like crazy people; throwing stones and Molotov cocktails. We had to protect ourselves; to show we were serious, and we did warn them, shouting several times, before opening fire. But they continued to attack. I don’t remember who I shot, I just tried to shoot at the people’s feet.

It’s come back several times, and I can see the faces of the people I was ordered to shoot. I’ve asked a very spiritual mullah to pray for me.

I did it for Islam but it wasn’t easy to kill people. We have to remember who they are though - they’re deceitful people who are against the Islamic Revolution. You can’t expect us to stay calm when they want to overthrow our regime.”

They also have evidence that a substantial, though undetermined, number of soldiers has been ordered to hand over their national identity cards to officers.

Most importantly, according to another CPV report, up to a third of voting booths in Iran will be protected by the Revolutionary Guards, and not the regular Law Enforcement Agency personnel.

At the height of the street battles, in Sadaat Abad, a middle-class neighborhood in east Tehran, young men and women organized themselves into an unofficial militia to fight the Basij, with a "commander" taking responsibility for each street. Every afternoon, they would meet to prepare for the evening's expected battle, according to a 25-year-old student who was involved with the group.

Mr. Moradani remembers field trips to war monuments, Shiite shrines and so-called martyrs' cemeteries, where those who died in the Iran-Iraq war are buried. He received his first military training before he turned 14, learning how to handle a gun and fight from trenches, he says. When he was 14, the Basij forces piled Mr. Moradani and 100 other youths into buses and took them around the dormitories of Tehran University. At the time -- 10 years ago this week -- students had been orchestrating large, antigovernment protests. The demonstrations were among the most significant since the 1979 founding of the Islamic Republic. Basij commanders ordered the teenagers to beat up student organizers, Mr. Moradani says. They did. In 2003, when student uprisings erupted again, he rushed to help quash them.

A few hours after Mr. Khamenei's sermon, Mr. Moradani got a call at home. The local Basij headquarters was holding an emergency meeting. About four hundred members showed up. A top Basij commander briefed them on the riots and their responsibilities going forward. He called protesters "havoc makers" and accused them of having ties to Western countries aiming to sow chaos in Iran. The commander said the protests were no longer a matter of election unrest, but had become a serious, national-security threat.

Mr. Moradani lined up with his comrades to receive an official letter of deployment, signed and bearing the seal of the Revolutionary Guard. He was given new equipment: a camouflage vest to wear over his clothes, a plastic baton, handcuffs and a hand-held radio. Depending on rank, some members received shields and hard hats, and others were given chains and tear gas, according to Messrs. Gholami and Moradani. Mr. Moradani says no one in his division carried knives or guns.

A surgeon at Pars Hospital in central Tehran, where many of the fallen were taken, confirmed casualties on both sides. He said the hospital had operated on three young people from the opposition who were shot in the head and abdomen by security forces. He also treated scores who were badly beaten or stabbed, he said. Among them were Basij and government supporters, he said -- including Basij members who had acid thrown on their faces.

Tavassali

Nabavi

Atrianfar

The organisation said security service agents have moved into newspaper offices where they have been vetting articles and censoring content.

Four pro-reform newspapers have been closed down,

The wave of detentions has spread beyond the capital to include provincial cities. At least 100 civic figures are understood to have been arrested in Tabriz, where Mousavi has strong support.

In Shiraz, in the south of the country, Amnesty cited reports said that a hundred students had been detained after security forces used teargas to storm the university library.

members of the Tahkim-e Vahdat, an influential students organisation supporting the other reformist candidate Mehdi Karoubi, had been "systematically targeted".

Jalaeipour

Soltani

Abtahi

“Imam Khomeini once told the Guardian Council ‘I fear the day when you are surrounded by an [elite] group, while the youth and our people scream slogans against you to reclaim their rights.’ 

Over 100 people arrested in Tehran and Sanandaj in the run-up to, during, and after peaceful gatherings planned to celebrate May Day 2009. Although some have been released, dozens are believed to remain in detention,

Sajad Khaksari, a reporter for the weekly Qalam-e Moalem (Teacher’s Pen) and the son of Mohamad Khaksari and Soraya Darabi, both leaders of the Iran Teachers Trade Association (ITTA), was arrested on 26 April 2009 in front of the Ministry of Education. He was covering protests by teachers