Hundreds detained in Iran

CAIRO, Egypt — Police officers and militia forces crowded the streets of Tehran on Tuesday, setting up checkpoints and making clear that the government had zero tolerance for further public expressions of defiance to the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

One day after the powerful Guardian Council certified Ahmadinejad's landslide victory, the government made a series of official moves to close the book on weeks of protest that represented the strongest challenge to its control since the Islamic Republic was founded in 1979.

Parliament issued a statement expressing broad gratitude over the June 12 vote and thanking police and the Basij militia for maintaining security. Ahmadinejad visited the Ministry of Intelligence, where he spoke to employees.

Authorities continued to detain hundreds of journalists, former government officials, political activists and even independent researchers.

The recent arrest of Bijan Khajehpour, an independent political economist, sent a chill deeper yet into Iran's civil society because he had not been involved in demonstrations, political analysts said.

Khajehpour was detained at the airport coming into the country from Britain and, like many others, has disappeared into the notorious Evin prison, raising the prospect of a political purge, the analysts said.

"Bijan was perhaps the last independent-minded analyst living in Tehran who continued to travel to Europe and the U.S. and give open lectures about Iran," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "He always believed that if he was totally transparent, the government would understand he was not doing anything wrong."

The government also has fired high-ranking officials who had supported Mir Hossein Mousavi, according to Iranian news reports.

Human-rights groups said those arrested and sent to Evin were in physical danger.

Amnesty International said in a statement that it was "gravely concerned that several opposition leaders ... may be facing torture, possibly to force them to make televised 'confessions' as a prelude to unfair trials in which they could face the death penalty."

Reporters Without Borders, a press-freedom organization, said the concern extended beyond opposition leaders: "Several journalists and bloggers were brutally treated by the guards and by men employed by the state prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi."

With the vote now officially over, the government pressed forward with its efforts to rewrite a narrative of events first cast by millions who took to the streets, then through independent and citizen journalism.

The government maintains Western agents, primarily British, have been responsible for the unrest. The government Monday sought to recast blame for the deaths of about 17 protesters and injuries to hundreds.

The commander of Iran's Basij militia, Hossein Taeb, even suggested that an impostor wearing a Basiji uniform had been responsible for killing Neda Agha Soltan, the young woman who became an international symbol when video of her shot and dying in the street became an Internet sensation.