Iran's ex-president attacks Ahmadinejad in student speech
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran's reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami on Tuesday accused his successor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of increasing poverty, in a keenly-awaited speech to hundreds of students at Tehran University.
Speaking to a packed hall of more than 1,000 students, Khatami blasted the government's favoured slogan of bringing economic "justice" to Iran, saying the country's priorities went beyond this.
His speech came two days after hundreds of students at Tehran University held a protest calling for the release of detained colleagues and chanting slogans against Ahmadinejad.
"It is not right to reduce justice to economic justice," said Khatami, who served as president from 1997 to 2005.
"Such a justice spreads poverty and empties the purses of the people who should be used to make the country more powerful and more rich," he said, according to the student ISNA news agency.
His comments were a thinly-veiled attack on the government's policy of ploughing money into local infrastructure projects and handing out loans which reformists see as a menace to long-term economic development.
"We need to fight for economic justice but what is more important is the right of people to decide their own fate. These are the reforms that the people want," said Khatami.
Witnesses said crowds of people unable to find places gathered outside and the students shouted slogans in favour of Khatami.
The speech carried huge symbolic resonance as it was at Tehran University in December 2004 that the then president Khatami was famously heckled by students frustrated by the lack of reform.
Khatami was elected on a wave of popular enthusiasm from young people and women for reform in Iran but many supporters became disgruntled when opposition by powerful hardliners torpedoed his plans for change.
Yet the charismatic mid-ranking cleric remains a popular figure amongst many Iranians, despite the acknowledged failings of his rule.
"Despite all the obstacles, the university is alive," added Khatami.
Earlier, the judiciary said Iran is currently holding up to 24 students in jail after a spate of university demonstrations in Tehran over the past two months.
"Between 20 and 24 students are in jail. They have been arrested over recent months, notably for seeking to disturb the public order," judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.
Students have been protesting against the replacement of liberal professors, pressure on activists by the authorities and the detention of students.
The detention since May of three students from Tehran's Amir Kabir University has become a major issue for the protesters.
The trio were given jail sentences of up to three years in October on charges of printing anti-Islamic images in four student newspapers -- accusations they strongly deny.
