THE IRANIAN
TIMES
N E W S F L A S H
Thursday, Dec 25, 1997
Dey 4, 1376
No. 381
Ebrahim Yazdi released
TEHRAN, Dec 25 (AFP) - Iranian liberal opposition leader Ebrahim Yazdi was freed on bail on Thursday after spending 11 days in jail, the official IRNA news agency reported.
The agency, quoting a revolutionary court branch, said Yazdi, 65, had been arrested on December 14 on charges of "insulting sacred religious values" of the Islamic republic.
He was freed "after necessary investigations and posting bail pending a final verdict."
Yazdi, the leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI), a banned but tolerated group with democratic views, has been under conservative fire for challenging the supremacy of Iran's spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Yazdi was a foreign minister in the interim government set up after the 1979 Islamic revolution, but he soon joined the opposition over differences with the ruling Shiite Moslem clergy.
The FMI, a democratic nationalist movement which fought for the revolution, took a different path to the clergy because it was opposed to a religious government ruled by Velayat-e-Faqih, or the supreme leader.
To the FMI, the concept of Velayat, who is invested with all-encompassing powers, is incongruous with a populist system of government.
The conservatives recently linked Yazdi and other liberal politicians to political unrest last month following attacks on Khamenei by dissident cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri.
Montazeri, a one-time designated heir to the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, raised questions about Khamenei's qualifications to serve as a political and religious leader.
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