Iran reformists back down -- Apparently there was no election fraud, just US conspiracy

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g1ENqqTnid14_wo1bwzgI8Zu862Q

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Leading reformist Mohammad Ali Abtahi told the revolutionary court in Tehran that he should not have taken part in protests as there had not been any fraud in the June 12 poll, which returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to office for another four years, the Fars news agency reported.

"I say to all my friends and all friends who hear us, that the issue of fraud in Iran was a lie and was brought up to create riots so Iran becomes like Afghanistan and Iraq and suffers damage and hardship," Abtahi told the court. It was wrong of me to take part in the rallies, but (Mehdi) Karroubi told me that we cannot call the people onto the streets with such a meagre number of votes, so we had better go to the streets ourselves to demonstrate our protest," he said.

snip

Another accused, Mohammad Atrianfar, too expressed his loyalty to the regime during his testimony on Saturday. Fars quoted Atrianfar, of the reformist Executives of Construction group, as saying that "we mistook certain irregularities (in the vote) as fraud." American-Iranian scholar Kian Tajbakhsh, also among the defendants, blamed the United States, saying it had long had a plan to "change the regime" in Iran.

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Well, that does it. There was no fraud.

n/t

were risking virtually nothing. How can you even compare the two from the comforts of your existence; how dare you? Sometimes people's ignorance and callousness here floors me. Have you not read anything about Stalin trials, for example, and people "confessing"?

interesting point...

:shrug:

Those haunted looks have to do with their new macrobiotic diet or something...yeah, that's the ticket!!

Nothing to see here, move along...

And pay no attention to the people in the streets who haven't given up.

Pay no attention to the dead, either.

Prediction: More cowards than guts.

life. This is fucking unbelievable. Who are you, people? Naive, ignorant Americans we hear so much about?

I was referring to the chorus of world leaders from Riyadh to Bonn to Beijing who will hold off on their criticism of the dictators in Iran in the face of this false excuse.

It's pretty obvious that the people on trial are under duress - and I would say it's far more likely that they are worrying about direct threats to their families than about their own well-being (although that's certainly something to worry about).