Then a man in a car moving in the other direction rolled down his
window and shouted at her in anger, ‘You whore! Why are you creating
conflict between people?’ A basiji (a member of the volunteer
paramilitary aligned with Ahmadinejad) charged at her from nowhere with
a metal rod and was about to beat her when he was held down and beaten
himself by five or six men streaming out of nearby cars.
‘I mean, just look at this! If Ahmadinejad won 25 million votes,
which they claim, we should be celebrating, right?’ an onlooker
commented.”
“One employee of the Interior Ministry, which carried out the vote
count, said the government had been preparing its fraud for weeks,
purging anyone of doubtful loyalty and importing pliable staff members
from around the country.
‘They didn’t rig the vote,’ claimed the man, who showed his ministry identification card but pleaded not to be named. ‘They didn’t even look at the vote. They just wrote the name and put the number in front of it.’”
“From a reader: ‘My next door neighbor is an Iranian immigrant who came
here in 1977. He just received a SAT phone call from his brother in
Tehran who reports that the rooftops of nighttime Tehran are filled
with people shouting ‘Allah O Akbar’ in protest of the government and
election results. The last time he remembers this happening is in 1979
during the Revolution. Says the sound of tens of thousands on the
rooftops is deafening right now.’ It’s almost four in the morning in Iran.”
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