Iran says makes arrests over torn Khomeini picture

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has arrested several people over the tearing up of a picture of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, during anti-government demonstrations last week, a senior official said on Monday.

The detentions were announced a day after Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave a stern warning to the pro-reform opposition, accusing it of violating the law by insulting the memory of late revolutionary leader Khomeini.

Tension has increased in Iran since student backers of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi clashed in Tehran with police on December 7 in the largest such protests over the June 12 disputed presidential election in months.

State television has broadcast footage of what it said were opposition supporters tearing up and trampling on a picture of Khomeini during the rallies, when pro-reform students sought to renew their challenge to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The opposition has denied involvement in the reported incident, suggesting the authorities were planning to use it as a pretext for a renewed post-election crackdown on dissent.

"Those people who were at the site have all been identified," Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadai said, quoted by ISNA news agency.

He said arrests had been made, including one on the day of the student rallies, without giving names or numbers.

"They are all in detention and one of them has confessed," Jafari Dolatabadi said.

The prosecutor also said there would be "no mercy toward those who insulted the founder of the revolution," the official IRNA news agency reported. Khomeini spearheaded the 1979 Islamic revolution and remains revered in Iran. He died in 1989.

"WRONG THINKING"

On Sunday, some moderate websites suggested Mousavi, who says the June 12 presidential poll was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad's re-election, may be arrested. Mousavi has branded the Khomeini picture incident "very suspicious".

Jafari Dolatabadi said, according to IRNA: "If some people think that they have some supporters and that they will not be summoned (by the judiciary), it would be wrong thinking."

A cleric representing Khamenei in the elite Revolutionary Guards suggested the authorities had been too soft on the reformist opposition and its media in the past.

"If we had broken the pens of men of letters and had erected gallows, they would not have assailed our beliefs in this way," IRNA quoted Mojtaba Zolnour as saying.

The election had plunged Iran into its deepest internal crisis since the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah three decades ago and exposed deepening establishment divisions.

Analysts say the internal political turmoil has further clouded prospects for any resolution of a long-running row with the West over Tehran's nuclear program, which Washington and its allies fear is aimed at making bombs. Tehran denies this.

The authorities have rejected opposition charges of vote fraud and portrayed the pro-Mousavi protests as a foreign-backed bid to undermine the Islamic state.

Last week's protests were much smaller than those in the days after the vote. But the mood seemed more radical with demonstrators chanting slogans against the clerical establishment and not just criticizing Ahmadinejad's victory.

Reformist websites have reported continued small, pro-Mousavi protests at several universities over the last week.

Crowds of clerics and other leadership loyalists have staged many pro-government rallies over the last few days to condemn the "insult" toward Khomeini, according to official media.

Thousands of Mousavi supporters were detained after the vote, including senior reformers. Most have been freed but about 80 people have received jail terms of up to 15 years and five have been sentenced to death over the post-vote unrest.

(Additional reporting by Ramin Mostafavi; writing by Fredrik Dahl; editing by Diana Abdallah)