CNN has new video from Iran:

BY PARISA HAFEZI and FREDRIK DAHL

TEHRAN – Thousands of people clashed with police Saturday after the disputed election victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked the biggest protests in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei told Iranians to respect Ahmadinejad’s victory in an presidential election that his closest challenger described as a “dangerous charade.”

Ahmadinejad on Saturday night accused the foreign media of coverage that harms the Iranian people after authorities claimed he was re-elected in a bitterly disputed vote.

He called on the public to respect Friday’s vote, after his main pro-reform challenger rejected the results and accused authorities of election fraud.

“This is a great victory at a time when the … propaganda facilities outside Iran and sometimes inside Iran were totally mobilized against our people,” Ahmadinejad said, according to an English translation of his victory speech carried on state television.

“The heaviest pressure and psychological warfare was organized against the people of Iran. A large number of foreign media … organized a full-fledged fight against our people.”

Mir Hossein Mousavi was arrested Saturday, an unofficial source reported.

According to the source, the presidential hopeful was arrested en route to the home of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that were a number of contradictory reports from Iran on Saturday, in a large part due to the heavy restrictions imposed on the media in the Islamic Republic, in particular on foreign reporters.

Ahmadinejad’s triumph in Friday’s vote upset expectations that reformist candidate Mirhossein Mousavi might win the race.

Up to 3,000 Mousavi supporters took part in the protests. In one place, some chanted, “What happened to our vote?.”

Others chanted anti-Ahmadinejad slogans, bringing traffic to a standstill. “We are Iranians too,” and “Mousavi is our president,” they shouted.

Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli, an Ahmadinejad ally, declared the president had been re-elected to a second four-year term with 62.6 percent of the vote, against 33.7 percent for Mousavi, in a record 85 percent turnout.

Mousavi protested against what he called violations and vote-rigging during the election. Interior Ministry officials rejected the allegations.

Mousavi said members of his election headquarters had been beaten “with batons, wooden sticks and electrical rods.”

In one incident police on motorcycles beat Mousavi backers who were staging a sit-in protest at the capital’s Vanak square.

At Tehran University, some 100 police with helmets and shields used tear and pepper gas as they chased 300-400 students, who were chanting: “People: support us, support us.”

Shops in the area were closed and small fires were burning on the street. Police later cordoned off the university area and were attacking student demonstrators, witnesses said.

A witness also said he had heard shots fired near a busy street in northern Tehran but it was not clear who was shooting and why.

Khamenei, Iran’s top authority, told defeated candidates and their supporters to avoid “provocative behavior.”

“The chosen and respected president is the president of all the Iranian nation and everyone, including yesterday’s competitors, must unanimously support and help him,” Khamenei said in a statement read on state television.

Mousavi, a veteran of the 1979 Islamic revolution, protested against what he said were many obvious election violations.

“I’m warning I will not surrender to this dangerous charade. The result of such performance by some officials will jeopardize the pillars of the Islamic Republic and will establish tyranny,” Mousavi said in a statement made available to Reuters.

Mousavi urged senior clerics in Iran’s Shi’ite religious center of Qom to speak out.

“Today all the ways to preserve our rights are closed. Silence of the ulema and grand ayatollahs may create more harm than fixing voting,” he said in a statement on his website.

NUCLEAR DISPUTE

Iranian and Western analysts said Ahmadinejad’s re-election would disappoint Western powers aiming to convince Iran to halt a nuclear program they suspect is aimed at making bombs, and could further complicate efforts by U.S. President Barack Obama to reach out to Tehran.

“It doesn’t augur well for an early and peaceful settlement of the nuclear dispute,” said Mark Fitzpatrick at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was monitoring the outcome of the election closely and hoped the results reflected the will of the Iranian people.

A bitter campaign generated intense excitement inside Iran and revealed deep divisions between those backing Ahmadinejad and those pushing for social and political change.

Ahmadinejad accused his rivals of undermining the Islamic Republic by advocating detente with the West. Mousavi said the president’s “extremist” foreign policy had humiliated Iranians.

Friday night, before official results emerged, Mousavi had claimed to be the “definite winner.” He said many people had been unable to vote and ballot papers were lacking.

He also accused authorities of blocking text messaging, with which his campaign tried to reach young, urban voters.

Saturday, Iran’s students’ news agency ISNA quoted Tehran’s Deputy Prosecutor General Mahmoud Salarkia as saying 10 people had been detained for “agitating public opinion through websites and blogs by propagating untruthful reports.”

Ahmadinejad draws most of his support from rural areas and poorer big city neighborhoods. Mousavi enjoys strong backing in wealthier urban centres, especially among women and the young.

Two other candidates attracted only minimal support.

Ahmadinejad, 52, won power four years ago, vowing to revive the values of the Islamic revolution. He has expanded the nuclear program, which Iran says is only for electricity generation, and stirred international outrage by denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be wiped off the map.

Hossein Jaseb, Hashem Kalantari, Zahra Hosseinian in Tehran and Alistair Lyon contributed to this report.

The bloody video of her death on Saturday, circulated in Iran and around the world, has made Ms. Agha-Soltan, a 26-year-old who relatives said was not political, an instant symbol of the antigovernment movement.

Her death is stirring wide outrage in a society that is infused with the culture of martyrdom — although the word itself has become discredited because the government has pointed to the martyrs’ deaths of Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war to justify repressive measures.

Ms. Agha-Soltan’s fate resonates particularly with women, who have been at the vanguard of many of the protests throughout Iran.

“I am so worried that all the sacrifices that we made in the past week, the blood that was spilled, would be wasted,” said one woman who came to mourn Ms. Agha-Soltan on Monday outside Niloofar mosque here. “I cry every time I see Neda’s face on TV.”

Opposition Web sites and television channels, which Iranians view with satellite dishes, have repeatedly shown the video, in which blood can be seen gushing from Ms. Agha-Soltan’s body as she dies. By Monday evening, there already were 6,860 entries for her on the Persian-language Google Web site. Some Web sites suggest changing the name of Kargar Street, where she was killed, to Neda Street.

Mehdi Karroubi, an opposition candidate for president in this month’s election, called her a martyr on his Web site. “A young girl, who did not have a weapon in her soft hands, or a grenade in her pocket, became a victim of thugs who are supported by a horrifying intelligence apparatus.”

Only scraps of information are known about Ms. Agha-Soltan. Her friends and relatives were mostly afraid to speak, and the government broke up public attempts to mourn her. She studied philosophy and took underground singing lessons — women are barred from singing publicly in Iran. Her name means voice in Persian, and many are now calling her the voice of Iran.

Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, contributed to a Persian Wikipedia entry. He said she never supported any particular presidential candidate. “She wanted freedom, freedom for everybody,” the entry read.

Her singing instructor, Hamid Panahi, offered a glimpse of her last moments.

He said the two of them decided to head home after being caught in a clash with club-wielding forces in central Tehran. They stepped out of the car. “We heard one gunshot, and the bullet came and hit Neda right in the chest,” he said. The shot was fired from the rooftop of a private house across the street, perhaps by a sniper, he said. On a Facebook posting along with the video, an anonymous doctor said he tried to save her but failed because the bullet hit her heart.

“She was so full of life,” said a relative who spoke on condition of anonymity. “She sang pop music.”

The relative said the government had ordered the family to bury Ms. Agha-Soltan immediately and barred family members from holding a memorial service.

The paramilitary forces were quick to stop memorial services elsewhere, too. More than a dozen bearded men on motorcycles dispersed nearly 70 people gathered outside Niloofar mosque on Monday. Authorities ordered the mosques not to hold services for any victims of the demonstrations over the past few days.

“Go, get lost,” they shouted, as the regular police stood by.

But one police officer, watching the militia, said a prayer aloud with the crowd in her honor: “Peace be upon the prophet and her family.”

As Ms. Agha-Soltan’s family held a private ceremony on Monday, they turned reporters away and refused to speak. “They were not allowed to hang even a black banner,” the relative said.

Funerals have long served as a political rallying point in Iran, since it is customary to have a week of mourning and a large memorial service 40 days after a death. In the 1979 revolution, that cycle generated a constant supply of new protests and deaths.

But the narrative of death has also been important in the lore surrounding the existence of the Islamic republic.

The government portrayed itself in the role of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad killed by a far larger army during the seventh-century struggle within Islam, which gave birth to the Shiite sect that predominates in Iran.

Days for prophets and saints believed killed in the service of the faith dot the holiday calendar, taking up 22 days of the year.

So the very public adulation of Ms. Agha-Soltan could create a religious symbol for the opposition and sap support for the government among the faithful who believe Islam abhors killing innocent civilians.

One poem circulating on the Internet explicitly linked her death to other symbols of the protest movement:

Stay, Neda —

Look at this city

At the shaken foundations of palaces,

The height of Tehran’s maple trees,

They call us “dust,” and if so

Let us sully the air for the oppressor

Don’t go, Neda

She has become the public face of an unknown number of Iranians who have died in the protests. While state television has reported 10 deaths and state radio 19, it is widely believed the total is much higher.

A witness said the body of a 19-year-old man who was killed in Tehran on Sunday was given to the family only after it paid $5,000.

For many Iranians, though, the death of a young woman has special meaning.

“We know a lot of people have died, but it is so hard to see a woman, so young and innocent, die like this,” a 41-year-old who gave his name as Alireza said Monday.

Women were particular targets after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began to strictly enforce previously loosened restrictions. Thousands of women were arrested or intimidated because they did not adhere precisely to Islamic dress code on the streets.

Mir Hussein Moussavi, the leading opposition candidate, campaigned along with his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, and other prominent Iranian women rallied to his side as he promised to improve the status of women.

A woman called Hana posted a comment on Mr. Karroubi’s Web site: “I am alive but my sister was killed. She wanted the wind to blow into her hair; she wanted to be free; she wanted to hold her head high up and say: I am Iranian. My sister died because there is no life left; my sister died because there is no end to tyranny.”

Neil MacFarquhar contributed reporting from New York.

Full Story

Relatives and friends of Neda Soltan, the 26-year-old protester who’s become an international symbol of Iranian resistance, wanted her to be remembered for her love of music and passion for travel.

“She was a person full of joy,” the Los Angeles Times quotes her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among mourners at her family home. “She was a beam of light. I’m so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman.”

Details continue to emerge Tuesday about the murdered protester nickamed “Angel of Freedom,” after graphic videos of her apparent murder at a Tehran protest hit the Internet.

Images of Soltan’s bloody death on Saturday have galvanized the country and many insist on speaking out about this young woman and who she was, despite authorities banning anyone from mourning her.

Neda was reportedly gunned down during protests in the capital city. Videos posted on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter show her bleeding from the nose and mouth as a crowd tries unsuccessfully to stanch the flow and save her life.

The video also shows a moving clip of a man identified as Panahi cradling her head and yelling out, “Neda, don’t be afraid. Neda, stay with me. Neda stay with me!”

The second of three children, Soltan studied Islamic philosophy at a branch of Tehran’s Azad University before deciding to take private classes to become a tour guide, hoping to ultimately lead Iranians on trips abroad, the L.A. Times reported.

She was reportedly passionate about traveling and had gone with friends to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand. The young Iranian was also an accomplished singer who was taking piano lessons, according to Panahi.

Soltan was not a hardcore activist, but had started attending the mass protests because she felt deeply outraged by the election results.

“She couldn’t stand the injustice of it all,” Panahi told the L.A. Times.

A close friend of Soltan, who the L.A. Times identified only as “Golshad,” said Neda’s parents had asked her not to go to the protest, fearing it was too dangerous.

“I told her, ‘Neda, don’t go,’” the Times quotes Golshad. “She said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s just one bullet and it’s over.’”

Friends say Soltan, Panahi and two others were stuck in traffic on their way to the demonstration sometime after 6:30 p.m.

When they stepped out of the car to get some air, Panahi heard a crack and then realized Soltan was on the ground.

“We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her,” the Times quoted Panahi. “It was just one bullet.”

“I’m burning, I’m burning!” Panahi recalls Soltan’s final words.

Doctors, fellow protesters and medical staff at Shariati Hospital made heroic efforts to rush Soltan to surgery and save her, but she was reportedly dead by the time she arrived at the emergency room.

Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near Eastern Affairs, told FOXNews.com that Neda has become “one of the pillars of this movement now,” and the bloody images of her dying in the street are its “main icons and symbols.”

Her family scheduled a memorial service to be held in a mosque in northern Tehran, but the government forbade ceremony. She was buried quietly at Tehran’s Behesht Zahra cemetery on Sunday with only her family present, says Soona Samsami, executive director of the Women’s Freedom Forum, who has been relaying information about protests inside Iran to international media.

All mosques were given a direct order from the government barring them from holding any memorial services for Neda, and her family was threatened with grave consequences if anyone gathered to mourn her, said Samsami.

Soltan’s loved ones were outraged by the authorities’ order not to eulogize her.

“They were threatened that if people wanted to gather there the family would be charged and punished,” Samsami told FOXnews.com.

Much of the attention and blame for Neda’s apparent murder is now being focused on Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose threatening speech Friday preceded the violent protests Saturday at which apparently Neda lost her life. Khamenei is now the prime target for protesters’ outrage, Khalaji said.

“For the first time since the election it seems that people are including in their slogans ‘Down with Khamenei,’ and ‘Death to Khamenei,’” he told FOXNews.com.

Iranian authorities have vehemently denied that police used lethal force to quell protests. They suggest loyalists to the exiled, outlawed opposition group Mujahedin Khalq may be responsible for the killing, the L.A. Times reported.

Her fiancé, Caspian Makan, said in an interview with BBC Persian that she had not supported any candidate in the allegedly fraudulent elections. Neda wanted “freedom for all,” he said.