Two days after Parliament fell into turmoil when Tehran representative Ali Motahari took the stand to speak out against house arrests, Motahari has issued a statement condemning his treatment in Parliament. This comes as a number of MPs announced their plan to hold a demonstration against Motahari following this week’s Friday Mass Prayers.
ILNA reports that in a statement issued on Tuesday January 13, Ali Motahari writes that as soon as he began to talk about the issue of the opposition leaders’ house arrests, about 15 to 20 MPs began to make noise to silence him. He adds that the deputy speaker, Mr. Aboutorabi, rather than demanding silence from those MPs, began responding to the speech without allowing it to culminate, which according to Motahari is unprecedented in Parliament.
The Tehran MP has been repeatedly announcing in Parliament that in his opinion the house arrests of MirHosein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard are against provisions of the constitution, and the detainees should be given a chance to defend themselves in court.
The opposition leaders, who have never been formally charged have been held under house arrest since February 2011 for triggering mass street protests by alleging vote fraud in the presidential election.
Sunday’s parliamentary session was brought to an end by the deputy speaker, who declared it was inappropriate to continue.
Motahari says three MPs forced him to leave the stand when he had only three more lines of his speech to give. He adds that his head now has some minor scratches and his speech was torn by Ebrahim Aghamohammadi, a Khorramabad MP.
Motahari stressed that he is issuing this statement so that those who voted for these representatives will take heed, adding that he hopes the coming Parliament will be a better one.
