Iran's Mousavi says ready for "martyrdom": ally

Iran protests spread to Asia
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By Parisa Hafezi
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi said he was "ready for martyrdom," according to an ally, in leading protests that have shaken the Islamic Republic and brought warnings of bloodshed from Iran's Supreme Leader.
Mousavi also called on Saturday for a national strike if he is arrested, a witness said. As darkness fell, rooftop cries of Allahu Akbar (God is greatest) sounded out across northern Tehran for nearly an hour, an echo of tactics used in the 1979 Islamic revolution against the Shah.
EDITORS' NOTE: Reuters and other foreign media are subject to Iranian restrictions on their ability to report, film or take pictures in Tehran.
In an act fraught with symbolic significance, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the mausoleum of the father of Iran's Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while unrest continued across Tehran in defiance of a ban on demonstrations.
Riot police deployed in force, firing teargas, using batons and water cannon to disperse protesters.
Witnesses said 2,000 to 3,000 were on the streets, fewer than the hundreds of thousands earlier in the week, but a clear challenge to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who used a speech on Friday to endorse disputed election results that gave hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a landslide victory.
Defeated candidate Mousavi, a product of the Islamic establishment himself and a former prime minister, made clear he would not back down.
"In a public address in southwestern Tehran, Mousavi said he was ready for martyrdom and that he would continue his path," a Mousavi ally, who asked not to be named, told Reuters by telephone from the Jeyhun street in Tehran.
A witness to the address said Mousavi, center of protests unprecedented in the 30-year history of the Islamic Republic, appeared to anticipate action against him.
"Mousavi called on people to go on national strike if he gets arrested," the witness told Reuters.
Mousavi demanded the elections be annulled.
"These disgusting measures (election rigging) were planned months ahead of the vote ... considering all the violations ... the election should be annulled," Mousavi said in a letter to the country's top legislative body.
The scale of the demonstrations in Iran, a major oil exporter embroiled in dispute with major powers over its nuclear program, has taken Iranians and foreign governments by surprise. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets in largely peaceful protests, though state media said seven or eight protesters were shot dead earlier in the week.
The attack on the mausoleum of Islamic revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini was likely to inflame passions among Iranians who revere the man who led a movement that overthrew the Western-backed Shah in 1979. It was not clear who carried out the bombing, confirmed by police; but such an incident could be cited by authorities in justifying a crackdown.
The bomber was killed and three others were wounded, according to the English-language Press TV. Continued...
Source: Reuters