[Times-UK] Martin Fletcher - Scarcely had polling ended than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's cronies in the Interior Ministry and Elections Commission declared him the winner. They gave him nearly two-thirds of the vote and claimed that the main challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi, lost heavily even in his own village. The crackdown began instantly. Mobile phone and text messaging systems were taken down so the opposition could not organize. Baton-wielding security forces flooded onto the streets as the regime showed how evil it is. All protests were ruthlessly suppressed. On the surface everything will gradually revert to the status quo ante, but below the surface a lot will have changed. Millions more Iranians will now seriously question the legitimacy of the regime.
2009-06-15 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive