Iran MP says no post-vote detainees raped in jail

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian parliamentary investigation has found that opposition leaders' allegations that some reformers were raped in jail are baseless, a member of the investigating committee said on Tuesday.

"After a meeting with (moderate defeated presidential candidate Mehdi) Karoubi yesterday and based on our thorough and complete investigation ... we believe the claims are baseless," Farhad Tajari told the official IRNA news agency.

Karoubi had said some people, arrested over unrest that erupted after the disputed June 12 presidential vote, had been raped while in detention.

"After the meeting with Karoubi, we realized his allegations had been based on the baseless remarks of some people," Tajari told IRNA.

Another lawmaker on Monday quoted Karoubi as saying that four people who say they were sexually abused in jail may be ready to provide testimony to parliament.

Karoubi, who came fourth in the June 12 election won by the incumbent, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has come under fire from hardliners for making the allegations.

The authorities rejected the accusations as baseless, but parliament speaker Ali Larijani last week said he would be ready to consider any documents or other evidence submitted by Karoubi to back up his claims.

Some hardliners have called for Karoubi to be arrested or tried if he failed to prove his allegations. Karoubi says he has evidence of mistreatment of detainees, and has also said some of those arrested were tortured and killed.

Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi supported Karoubi in a letter last week and accused "establishment agents" of raping and abusing detainees, reformist websites reported.

Losing candidates Mousavi and Karoubi say the election was rigged to secure the re-election of the hardline Ahmadinejad.

The poll and its turbulent aftermath have plunged Iran into its biggest internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed deepening divisions within the ruling elite.

Thousands of people were arrested during widespread street unrest after the vote. At least 200 people remain in jail, including senior moderate politicians, activists, lawyers and journalists. Losing candidates say some 69 people were killed in the street protests.

The authorities have put the death toll at 26 and say it was the "healthiest" vote the country has had in the past 30 years.

Iran has begun the fourth mass trial of post-election detainees, aimed at uprooting the opposition and putting an end to protests.

(Writing by Zahra Hosseinian; editing by Tim Pearce)