Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi will be released from house arrest on Monday, state media reported, 14 years after he was detained for calling for a rally in support of protests that swept the Arab world in 2011.
“My father was told by security agents that his house arrest will end today,” his son Hossein Karroubi told state news agency IRNA, adding that security agents would remain at the premises until April 8 due to security concerns.
The 87-year-old, ailing mid-level cleric has remained defiant, questioning the legitimacy of the clerical establishment in statements published by pro-reform websites.
After calling for a rally in solidarity with pro-democracy uprisings, Karroubi – along with ex-prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and his wife Zahra Rahnavard, a prominent academic – were put under house arrest in February 2011.
They have not been put on trial or publicly charged.
Former parliament speaker Karroubi and Mousavi ran for election in 2009 and became figureheads for Iranians who staged eight months of mass protests after a vote they believed was rigged to bring back hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Karroubi’s son Hossein told pro-reform Jamaran news website that his father demanded the release of Mousavi.
“They told my father that the same process … would be carried out for Mousavi within the next few months and Mousavi too would be released,” the Jamaran website quoted him as saying.
Iran’s judiciary made no comment.
Karroubi, like Mousavi and Rahnavard, had been under round-the-clock surveillance by security guards initially living in his home. But conditions improved in past years for Karroubi, with some family and politicians allowed to visit him.
Suffering from various medical complications, Karroubi has been taken to hospital several times for heart surgery and treatment.
During his election campaign, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian promised to make an effort for their release.
