Iran’s top election body yesterday began a partial recount of the fiercely disputed presidential election, after opposition demonstrators defiantly faced off against riot police in Tehran.
“The Guardians Council has started a partial recount of 10 percent of the ballot boxes,” state-owned Arabic-language television al-Alam said.
In an early indication that the process would not put into question Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election win, the official IRNA news agency said recounting so far in one Tehran district gave him more votes than in the June 12 election. It did not give details.
IRNA also said recounting had started in the western Kurdistan province. Mehr News Agency said it was also under way in the city of Karaj west of Tehran, in the presence of senior local officials.
It was not clear when the results of the recount would be released.
The opposition is demanding a complete rerun of the vote, claiming it was marred by widespread irregularities and fraud in a dispute that has shaken the very foundations of the Islamic regime.
On Sunday, riot police in Tehran dispersed about 3,000 supporters of Ahmadinejad’s strongest rival Mir Hossein Mousavi who defied a ban on public gatherings, witnesses said.
A witness spoke of a “minor confrontation” between police and the demonstrators who had gathered around Ghoba mosque to mark the anniversary of a prominent cleric killed in a bombing 28 years ago.
The information could not be independently verified as foreign media are banned from the streets under tough new restrictions imposed by the authorities in the wake of the election.
The Guardians Council, an unelected body of 12 jurists and clerics, has set up a committee to conduct the recount but Mousavi and fellow defeated candidate Mehdi Karroubi rejected the panel and declined to send any representatives to oversee the count.
Karroubi, a reformist former parliament speaker, insisted in a letter to the council on Sunday that a partial recount was “not enough” and called for an independent body to probe “all aspects of the election.”
Mousavi, who was prime minister in the post-revolution years, won 34 percent of the vote against 63 percent for Ahmadinejad, a gap of 11 million votes, according to official results. Karroubi came a distant fourth with less than one percent.
The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights said on Sunday that more than 2,000 people are still in detention and hundreds more are missing across Iran since a government crackdown on protesters and opposition supporters.
Since the election at least 17 people have been also killed in clashes with security forces during the massive public demonstrations against the election, according to state media.
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