AFP, London, June 14, 2009 – Amnesty International called Sunday for the Iranian authorities to immediately investigate a crackdown on demonstrators by the security forces following President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s re-election.
’The shocking scenes of violence meted out by the security forces need to be urgently investigated and those responsible for human rights violations must be brought to justice,’ said
Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa programme.
’While we recognise the duty of security forces to ensure that public order is upheld, the families of those detained, the Iranian public and the international community should be told what exactly are the basis of the charges and shown how exactly those arrested were connected to violence.’
The London-based rights organisation said it had reports of plain-clothes security forces using batons to disperse supporters of Amadinejad’s closest challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi, who protested the election result on Saturday.

Police said they had rounded up 170 people over the protests, which triggered violence on a scale not seen since 1999.

Sahraoui said no one should be arrested simply for questioning the election results and urged the authorities ’to act in a transparent manner to address the concerns raised by many Iranians that results have been tampered with’.

’We deplore that the new presidential term is heralded with widespread abuses,’ she said

’Amnesty International considers anyone arrested simply for demanding transparency and for questioning the results of the elections to be a prisoner of conscience, who should be immediately and unconditionally released.’