Defiant Iran expands mass trial

TEHRAN, Iran – Iran expanded a mass trial of opposition supporters on Sunday with the addition of 25 defendants – including a Jewish teenager – in defiance of international condemnation, as France said Iran agreed to release from prison a French woman held on spying charges.

The defendants are among more than 100 people charged with plotting a “soft revolution” against the Islamic theocracy during the postelection protests. The mass trial is part of an attempt to put an end to the protests by those who say Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s June 12 re-election was the result of fraud.

In apparent attempt to fend off criticism and move ahead with his second term, Ahmadinejad named three women who, if confirmed, would be Iran’s first female Cabinet ministers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The trial, now in its third session, has included a number of televised confessions and has drawn international condemnation from human rights groups that allege the confessions are coerced. The U.S. last week labeled the event a “show trial.”

The trial and official acknowledgments that some detainees have been abused in prison have only added to anger among both opposition supporters and some conservatives upset with the treatment of protesters.

The additional defendants brought the total number being tried to 135.

The defendants include a number of high-ranking politicians linked to the country’s pro-reform movement as well as employees from the British and French embassies and an Iranian-Canadian reporter for Newsweek magazine.

Clotilde Reiss, a French academic who had appeared during one of the previous court sessions, was freed Sunday from an Iranian prison, the French president’s office said.

One of the new defendants was Yaghoghil Shaolian, 19, a member of Iran’s Jewish community, which numbers about 25,000 people. He was quoted by the semiofficial Fars news agency as saying that he was not an activist but that he got caught up in the moment and threw stones at a Tehran bank during a protest.