Mick Hartley

With elections due in March, here’s how democracy works in Iran:

The death of a student in the custody of Iranian intelligence officers has provoked outrage among opponents of the regime, who claim it is part of a concerted crackdown on dissent in the run-up to parliamentary elections.

Ebrahim Lotf-Allahi, a fourth year law student, was buried before his family could see his body.

They later discovered that the grave had been filled with cement, apparently to prevent his body being exhumed for medical examination.

Student leaders say 150 students have been arrested so far this year and 60 remain in prison.

Iranian authorities claim that Mr Lotf-Allahi committed suicide after he was arrested in the city of Sanandaj, but his is the second suspicious death in custody in the city in just over a month.

In December a young woman doctor, Zahra Bani Yaghoub, died after she was arrested for walking in a park with a man to whom she was not related.

Her family say that bruises on her body suggested she had been beaten while in custody.

Sources in Sanandaj said Mr Lotf-Allahi was picked up as he left his university’s examination hall and that when his family went to arrange for him to be released from custody, they were told that he has committed suicide. […]

Opponents of the Iranian regime have complained that they have been the victims of a crackdown by hardliners in the run up to the elections.

Last week it emerged that about 2,000 of the 2,500 reformist candidates planning to stand had been barred from participating.

The National Trust Party, headed by Ayatollah Karoubi, a presidential candidate at the last elections, had 230 out of its 300 applications rejected while Saeed Shariati, spokesman for the the Islamic Participation Front, said the vast majority of its candidates had been disqualified.

“The governing body disqualified 85 per cent of our candidates for unbelievable reasons,” he said.