Tehran (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Iran's opposition leaders have decided to go ahead today with a commemorative event in memory of those slain last month, even if the authorities have banned it. The march will mark the 40 day anniversary of the deaths of demonstrators who had protested against elections they called fraudulent, which led to the re-election of Ahmadinejad.
The ceremony includes the reading of certain passages from the Koran. Among those remembered, 27 year old Neda Agha Soltan, whose death on June 20 last, was captured by a cellphone, shocking public opinion worldwide. Neda was killed while watching the protests, she had not taken part in them.
The video of this death, uploaded onto the Internet has become a kind of symbol for the opposition movement to the rule of Ahmadinejad and Supreme Guide Khamenei.
Under public pressure and because of the tension within the leadership, the Iranian government has released 140 prisoners arrested during the unrest last month, and says it hopes to release almost all those arrested by August 7.
But at least twenty of those arrested will go on trial on August1st. This group is accused of "threatening public order and security" and "having links with the hypocrites," the name by which authorities define the “people of the mujaheddin (Mujaheddin-e-Khalq)”, the opposition guerrilla movement in exile.
They are also accused of having used bombs, firearms and grenades, of having attacked the security forces and Basij, or "volunteers of the Revolution”.