Moussavi not backing down

Opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi remains defiant:

Opposition figures said Thursday that all but four of the 70 academics who had been arrested a day earlier after meeting with the main opposition leader, Mir Hussein Moussavi, had been released. There was no information about the remaining four. Hundreds of opposition supporters, intellectuals, and journalists have been detained in a wave of political arrests that has been depicted as the most sweeping since the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Mr. Moussavi himself has not appeared publicly since last week, and, in a statement on a Web site maintained by his supporters, complained Thursday that his “access to people is completely restricted.” Even as fears mounted in the opposition camp that the government was preparing the groundwork to detain Mr. Moussavi himself, however, he remained defiant.

“I will not back down even for a second, even for personal threats or interests,” according to the statement.

Calling the June 12 presidential election a “big fraud,” Mr. Moussavi said government security forces had “attacked protesters inhumanely, killed, injured or arrested them.” Going further, he said, “I am willing to show how election criminals have stood by those behind the recent riots and shed people’s blood.”

Mr. Moussavi also said in the statement that there were “recent pressures on me aimed at withdrawing” his challenge to the vote. “I insist on the nation’s constitutional right to protest against the election result and its aftermath,” he said, criticizing the closure in recent days of an opposition newspaper affiliated with him and the arrest of those who worked here.