03 March 2017•Update: 05 March 2017
By Mahmoud Barakat
ISTANBUL
Iranian authorities on Friday jailed a prominent member of an opposition party for three months for voicing criticisms of Iran’s influential Revolutionary Guards Corps (RGC).
In a recent speech, Hujjat al-Islam Muhammed Nuri, cultural advisor for Iran’s National Trust Party (NTP), said the RGC was intervening in areas outside its jurisdiction, according to Iran’s Kalema website.
The Kalema website is known to be close to opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who since 2011 has remained under house arrest.
A reformist political party, the NTP was established in 2005 by Mahdi Karroubi, who lost Iran’s 2009 presidential poll to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Karroubi’s loss to Ahmadinejad led to widespread demonstrations at the time by his supporters.
The authorities closed the NTP after Karroubi alleged that a number of his supporters had been tortured by the Iranian security services.
Both Karroubi and Mousavi have remained under house arrest since 2011 for having allegedly encouraged the post-poll demonstrations.
In 2013, during the tenure of current President Hassan Rouhani, the NTP was readmitted into Iran’s political arena.
