TEHRAN — Iranian judicial authorities arrested a protégé of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday, the latest round in an escalating power struggle between Iran’s elected leader and the country’s most influential political family.
The Tehran prosecutor’s Web site announced the arrest of Saeed Mortazavi late Monday night, although it gave no official reason for the action.
The move follows the disclosure of a secret film by President Ahmadinejad on Monday in parliament, in which Mr. Mortazavi could be seen purportedly discussing a fraudulent business deal proposed by Fazel Larijani, 49, the youngest of the five brothers of the politically influential Larijani family.
The president’s disclosure of the film of the meeting caused an uproar in Iran, where allegations of corruption are usually made behind closed doors.
The ensuing arrest of Mr. Mortazavi, the president’s ally, heightens the intensifying stakes in the battle. Mr. Mortazavi has been controversial figure, known for closing dozens of reformist newspapers while he was a judge. The Canadian government has implicated him in the death of an Iran-Canadian photographer in 2003. And in 2010 a parliamentary report concluded that Mr. Mortazavi, while working as a prosecutor, shared responsibility for the death of three protesters in a police prison facility.
Most recently lawmakers forced his dismissal as the head of the vast Social Welfare Organization, only to have President Ahmadinejad reinstate him as caretaker.
Traveling to Egypt on the first visit of an Iranian president to that country since the 1979 Islamic revolution, Mr. Ahmadinejad condemned the arrest of Mr. Mortazavi, saying he had discovered a crime, but was now being punished.
“The judiciary belongs to the nation, and is not a family organization,” he told the state Islamic Republic News Agency on Tuesday, an apparent swipe at the Larijani family.
President Ahmadinejad, who is embroiled in political fights with both the parliament and the judiciary, has long criticized what he calls the Larijani family’s grip on power in Iran. The Larijanis counter that they have all been appointed to their positions through normal procedures.
The Larijani family is well known in Iran for the high positions they hold. One of the brothers, Ali Larijani, 55, is the head of parliament and former top nuclear negotiator, another, Sadegh Larijani, 52, is an ayatollah who heads Iran’s judiciary. The oldest brother, Mohammad-Javad Larijani, 61, is a Berkeley-educated mathematician, and one of the main theoreticians of the Islamic Republic’s political ideology.
Ali Larijani is expected to run in upcoming presidential elections scheduled for June 14, for which president Ahmadinejad is expected to support one of his own close aides as a candidate. The accusations against the Larijani family seem aimed at portraying them and their supporters as corrupt as elections near.
Mr. Mortazavi’s arrest, directly following Mr. Ahmadinejad’s disclosure of the film, is remarkable given that many politicians had called for Mr. Mortazavi’s arrest over the prison deaths, an incident harshly condemned by the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“A person was attempting to do trades that seem illegal,” Mr. Mortazavi told the Iranian Student News Agency on Monday before his arrest. “I merely reported this case to the government.”
On Sunday Ali Larijani said in parliament that he had no problem with the accusations, saying it reflected more on the president’s conduct. “They only show his true character,” the semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted him as saying.
Ahmadinejad’s Ally Arrested in as Fight With Family Grows
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Ahmadinejad’s Ally Arrested in as Fight With Family Grows
