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No Mercy on Iran Streets as Protesters Are "Put in Their Place"
(Sunday Times-UK) Fatemeh Jamalpour - Tear gas filled the air as Iranian security forces attacked a crowd of protesters in central Tehran last week, hitting them with batons and firing rubber bullets into their faces. Arash Sadeghi, a human rights activist who has spent years in Iranian prisons, watched as plainclothes agents and Revolutionary Guards militiamen beat women and teenagers, and loaded others into steel mesh cages mounted on the back of riot police vehicles. "They showed no mercy," he said. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Saturday that "rioters must be put in their place." He also reiterated claims that foreign powers were behind the protests. There have now been demonstrations in more than 100 locations in 22 of Iran's 31 provinces, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said.