Large turnout reported for dissident cleric Montazeri's funeral

Thousands of mourners attended the funeral on Monday of Iran's most prominent dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, according to websites. Some reports say that hardliners disrupted the proceedings.

AFP - Thousands of mourners on Monday attended the funeral of Iran's top dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, websites said, amid reports proceedings were violently disrupted by hardliners.
  
Opposition website Rahesabz.net said "tens of thousands of people" were attending the funeral of Montazeri, an inspiration to Iran reformists and human rights activists, who died aged 87 on Saturday.
  
Conservative website Asriran.com estimated that "hundreds of thousands" of mourners had turned up for the funeral in the city of Qom.
  
The reports could not be independently verified by AFP as foreign media are banned from covering the ceremony.
  
Rahesabz.net said hardline and pro-government "Ansar Hezbollah groups entered the crowd and wanted to derail the slogans and disrupt the ceremony. They went away after clashing with some people."
  
The cleric, who had been considered by his followers as the highest living authority of Shiite Islam in Iran, was buried in the shrine of Masoumeh, a revered Shiite figure, in Qom.
  
Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi have declared Monday a day of mourning and urged their supporters to participate in the funeral.
  
Mourners were shouting slogans such as "Dictator, Montazeri's way will continue" and "Montazeri is not dead, it is the government which is dead," Rahesabz said. 
  
It added that many mourners were carrying green signs -- the colour of the opposition.
  
The authorities have slowed Internet connections down to a crawl, as has been the case whenever opposition demonstrations are anticipated.
  
 The BBC said that its Persian television signal was being jammed, adding that it was continuing to broadcast into Iran.
  
The British Broadcasting Corporation said its service for Persian speakers began facing persistent interference after it began coverage on Sunday of the death Montazeri.
  
Once designated as the successor to the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Montazeri came out in bold support of the Iranian opposition when it rejected the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June.
  
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei offered condolences to his family although Montazeri was also critical of him and questioned his credentials for being the country's highest religious authority.
  
Montazeri had long been critical of the concentration of power in the hands of the supreme leader and called for changes to the constitution, which he helped draw up after the 1979 Islamic revolution, to limit his authority.
  
The grand ayatollah also often criticised hardliner Ahmadinejad over his domestic and foreign policies, including Tehran's nuclear standoff with the West.
  
He called on other leading clerics to break their silence over rights abuses during the government's crackdown on opposition supporters protesting the presidential election, which they charge was rigged in Ahmadinejad's favour.
  
Montazeri, one of the chief architects of the Islamic republic, was a student and close ally of Khomeini, whom he was set to succeed.
  
But the cleric fell from grace in the late 1980s after he became too openly critical of political and cultural restrictions, most notably Iran's treatment of political prisoners and opposition groups.
  
Montazeri resigned months before Khomeini's death in 1989, and was told by Khomeini to stay out of politics and focus instead on teaching in Qom. Unfazed by such warnings, he continued to speak out.
  
The grand ayatollah also questioned the theological credentials of Khamenei. This was branded as treason, and in 1997 he was placed under house arrest.
  
Freed after five years on health grounds during the reformist presidency of Mohammad Khatami, the grand ayatollah vowed that he would continue to speak out in defence of freedom and justice.

Date created : 2009-12-21