SCENES AT DASTHEIB MOSQUE SURPASS HORRORS OF BATTLEFIELD!

Freedom for Iran is saddened to hear that the EVIL Islamic regime in Iran has finally managed to close the Dastgheib Mosque in Shiraz. Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Mohammad Dastgheib is one of the leading clerics who has been critical of the Regime's actions in the recent past.

Thugs had surrounded the mosque for days, throwing bricks and stones and chanting slogans against the Ayatollah and others who have been critical of June's election results, the Regime's human rights abuses, and the deaths that took place on the holy day of Ashura. The Ayatollah's supporters were been reported to have stayed at the scene constantly to prevent these thugs from entering the mosque.

Last Friday night (1/1/10) there was yet another appalling attack on the on this mosque.

In more appalling acts of intimidation and violence against peaceful worshippers, plain-clothed security forces, accompanied by basijis, attacked, entering the mosque, threatening to set it alight.

Our first witness reported overhearing a basiji officer saying :

"Go contact the beyt [Kamenei's HQ] to see if we have to finish them off right now or not!!!"

But, presumably because it was an attack on a mosque, the Supreme Leadership maintained contact while Friday's attack was taking place and apparently banned the thugs from taking that final step - burning the mosque down!

Our second eye-witness, a cleric, described the violence as the worst he had seen since his battlefield experiences during the Iran/Iraq war!

This man, although a hojjat-al-islam (leading cleric), has always refused to serve the regime and has therefore not fared well. He has been banned from giving sermons in mosques and has been deprived of his income as a result of this.

For more than 20 years this highly educated man - one with high human rights standards who refused to serve the regime - and his family have been forced to live very meagerly, unable to earn a decent living. A similar story indeed to Ayatollah Dastgheib who, although completely capable of abusing his high rank of clerical class never does so - he too lives in a poor rental house, in the downtown area of Shiraz.

Our dear friend, the cleric, described what happened to him during the Iran/Iraq war - his previous "horror story" and I recount it for you below :

• My worst memory was there on the battlefield
• Once we, myself and my column of Iranians, were marching towards a rally point
• On the way we were ambushed by the Iraqis and they had us under fire
  
• They killed almost all of my fellow soldiers
  
• I was not shot as one of my friends fell onto me
• But I couldn't move as the Iraqis were there and could shoot at any moment
• I laid among the corpses of the soldiers all night long, among bloody cold bodies
• A cold, cold night with so many corpses around me, while machine guns were waiting above to shoot me
• The next day Iranian troops arrived to push the Iraqis back
  
• They rescued me and the dead bodies
• I was saved
  
• That night has never left me - it haunts me
  

BUT, our cleric tells me, the scene at the Dastgheib Mosque equalled - surpassed - the horror of laying, terrified and scared, on that battlefield all night long, surrounded by those corpses !!!

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Freedom for Iran says :

Shame on you all, basijis and plain-clothed security forces

Shame on the Islamic Republic of Iran for their blatant disregard of human rights conventions and laws