Iranian Students Rally Against Ahmadinejad

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http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/09/news/iran.php

TEHRAN: Hundreds of Iranian students angry about a crackdown on activists protested Sunday at Tehran University, the second such demonstration in less than a week, according to witnesses and state radio.

One witness, Mehdi Arabshahi, said the campus protest lasted more than two hours as dozens of students chanted slogans against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s hardline administration.

“Students chanted against policies by Ahmadinejad’s administration, which is imposing pressures on the universities and detaining activists,” Arabshahi said.

Another witness, Abbas Kazemi, said the protesters also chanted anti-war slogans aimed at the United States and Israel. He said students from other universities joined in the protest and broke one of the university’s gates. But, Kazemi said, there were no clashes with the police and no one was arrested.

State-run radio here confirmed in a news item that students held a protest at Tehran University, saying they chanted slogans against officials. It also said a group of nonstudents entered the university after breaking one of the gates but provided no other details. The media were not allowed to enter the campus.

The university and its surrounding neighborhood were calm after the gathering and welders were repairing the broken gate, the radio report said.

The protests were held to mark National Day of Students, which has been celebrated since 1953 when three students were shot and killed by the police in a protest against a visit by Vice President Richard Nixon of the United States.

State television also announced Sunday that the Intelligence Ministry had detained a group of activists that it described as hecklers who planned to stage an illegal gathering at the university.

Quoting a statement by the ministry, the report said the activists, who came from various cities, entered the university using fake identification cards before they were detained.

The report said intelligence officers confiscated concussion grenades, “illegal books” and alcoholic beverages from the detainees. It did not elaborate on the number of detainees or say when the arrests took place.

But last week, a group of leftist students said 33 students and activists, including four women, were detained Tuesday after they had staged a protest on the Tehran University campus.

Iranian Students Rally Against Ahmadinejad

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