Tehranis riot, claiming flawed poll result

Supporters of Iran's moderate presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi throw stones at riot police during a protest against the election results in Tehran June 13, 2009. Thousands of people clashed with police on Saturday after the disputed election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked the biggest protests in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. (Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters)

TEHRAN, Iran — As advisors to Mir-Hossein Mousavi met Saturday morning in the candidate’s headquarters in central Tehran to consider their next move, a group of police gathered one block away carried out an evidently pre-meditated plan to restore and maintain order in the capital city.

Even before final vote tallies had been announced, a group of officers began white-washing walls bearing Mousavi posters and street art, while other police in riot gear eyed pedestrians warily.

While the authorities were sending such mixed signals — combining calls by the country’s Supreme Leader to peacefully accept the official results and move on with bald-faced reminders that authorities would not hesitate to use force to maintain order — many of the voters who felt defrauded by the final tally took to the streets with a single-minded vengeance.

In the wake of a presidential election that officially certified Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a landslide winner, but that many Iranians — including Mousavi, Ahmadinejad’s main challenger — disputed, thousands of protesters clashed violently with police, as the joyful energy of the Mousavi campaign’s “Green revolution” boiled over into wrath in many sections of the city.

(Iason Athanasiadis reports that a level of rioting unseen since the 1979 revolution continued into the night.)

The rioters seemed to have the support of Mousavi himself, who, in a statement published on his website earlier in the day, angrily denounced election fraud and refused to recognize the results, declaring himself the winner.

Chanting “Death to the Dictator,” young Mousavi supporters scattered throughout the city threw stones at officers and set fire to any large objects they could get their hands on — dumpsters, tires, a city bus and four police motorcycles wrestled away from the authorities. Though authorities were clearly ready for unrest, they seemed unprepared for the breadth of depth of commotion.

Still, police were generally unsparing in their reactions to protesters of all stripes, wherever they cropped up in the city. Police attacked in swarms, often mounted on motorcycles, sometimes clad in plain clothes. They aimed their batons against the arms, legs and heads of young people who had aroused their attention. It was the rock-throwing protesters, attacking from rooftops and in small easily-scattered groups, that had most success eluding the police.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/general/090613/tense-stand-iranian-cry-foul