Source:

September 21, 2010

The widow of a renowned Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander has accused its current head of treason, RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

Fateme Amirani’s accusation came in an open letter to commander Mohammad Ali Jafari published on September 20.

Amirani is the widow of Revolutionary Guard division commander Hamid Bakeri, who is regarded as a war hero for his role in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

In her letter, Amirani describes the contested presidential election of June 2009 as a coup d’etat, and accuses Jafari of treason for the IRGC’s role in engineering the election’s outcome and in the ensuing crackdown on opposition protesters.

Bakeri’s family supported opposition candidates Mir Hossein Musavi and Mehdi Karrubi in the election and condemned the regime’s postelection crackdown.

Amirani criticizes the regime for trying to control everything and leave people without any power.

“Why should one side [the government] have all the means of power and the other side [the people] be without any power? I never remember such disasters in the shah’s time,” she writes.

She says in her letter that her children were beaten by members of the hard-line Basiji militia and Revolutionary Guard and warns Jafari that such suppression will only end in the regime losing all legitimacy.

Amirani also says in her letter that the Basijis who are suppressing people in the street are different from the Basijis during the war.

Bakeri’s family has criticized the regime on several occasions in the wake of the 2009 election.

His daughter told students at Tehran University that the Basijis and Revolutionary Guards who beat people in the streets are different from her father and uncle, who died in the war.

The Iranian government considers Bakeri and his brother Ebrahim symbols of war and martyrdom.