Mir Hossein Mousavi

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's parliament approved on Sunday the last three ministers in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's 21-member cabinet after rejecting his original choices in September, the semi-official ILNA news agency said. Parliament voted to support Ahmadinejad's new candidates for the energy, welfare and education portfolios, although deputies criticized the nominee for the welfare job for mismanaging a disputed June 12 presidential election. Eighteen of Ahmadinejad's proposed ministers had won parliamentary approval in September after Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on the assembly to cooperate with the president. The June election sparked huge protests by the opposition which said it was rigged -- an ... Read Full Story

Iran's main opposition leader and defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has repeated his call for a new election, after unrest this month saw clashes between police and protesters, a reformist website reported on Saturday. "The Green Path condemns violence... though we may suffer losses... we want political prisoners to be freed, we want guarantees for a clean (new) election, we seek freedom of expression and the press," he was quoted as saying. In mid-August Mousavi said he will continue protesting against the disputed June 12 presidential election through a social movement called the "Green Path of Hope." He has charged that the election ... Read Full Story

Shahpour Kazemi, the brother-in-law of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, will face trial, Tehran prosecutor was quoted as saying by several local newspapers. He did not elaborate. Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, said on July 23 that her brother was among hundreds rounded up by authorities during the unrest that erupted after the disputed presidential election on June 12. She also warned Iranian authorities not to publish any "forced confessions" from her brother. Rahnavard has said her brother, a communications engineer, is not a political figure and that "allegations against him of provoking riots or connections to foreigners ... are unimaginable." Despite a severe ... Read Full Story

Tehran's prosecutor says the brother-in-law of Iran's top opposition leader will be put on trial before the country's Revolutionary Court. Shapour Kazemi, the brother of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's wife, was arrested in June amid a fierce crackdown on pro-reform protests that erupted following the disputed presidential election. The state news agency IRNA says the Tehran prosecutor announced Friday that Kazemi, 62, would be put on trial, but he did not specify the charges. More than 100 reform activists have been on trial before the Revolutionary Court, accused of seeking to topple the government. The opposition says Kazemi, an engineer, is not involved ... Read Full Story

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has created a powerful new intelligence organization to try to quell any further public unrest following June's disputed election, an exiled Iranian opposition group said on Thursday. The new organization, responsible for intelligence and security, is an off-shoot of the Revolutionary Guards and will report directly to the supreme leader's office, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a Paris-based group that has followers in Europe and claims many in Iran. The shift is the largest overhaul of the intelligence structure since 1989, when Iran's first Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini died, the ... Read Full Story