Opponents Snub Ahmadinejad Endorsement (formally endorsed as Iran’s leader for a second term)

New York Times ^ | 8/3/2009 | ROBERT F. WORTH and NAZILA FATHI

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BEIRUT, Lebanon — With his adversaries facing a mass trial of more than 100 alleged dissidents, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was formally endorsed Monday as Iran’s leader for a second term. But several of his most prominent opponents, who have called his re-election fraudulent, stayed away from the event, news reports said.

The ceremony, conducted by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, came one day after state television broadcast a chilling segment of the mass trial in which two defendants — both prominent reform figures — said they had “changed” since being arrested, and disputed widespread claims that their publicized confessions had been coerced through torture.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s formal endorsement at a ceremony in Tehran on Monday was a pre-requisite to his inauguration on Wednesday.

Ayatollah Khamenei had already given public support to Mr. Ahmadinejad’s landslide victory in elections on June 12 that opposition supporters say was rigged. The main legislative body in charge of elections, the Guardian Council, has also endorsed it as fair.

News reports said that several leading opponents of Mr. Ahmadinejad stayed away from the ceremony Monday, including the main reformist candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi and an opposition ally, Mehdi Karroubi.

Opposition leaders have also hinted that they will stay away from the inauguration later in the week.

Two former presidents who have criticized the election, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Mohammad Khatami, also boycotted Monday’s event, news reports said.

But Press TV said leaders of “the three branches of government” attended the formal endorsement, including Mohsen Rezai, an unsuccessful conservative presidential candidate who had previously challenged the outcome of the elections. At the mass trial on Sunday, a Tehran prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, who is running the hearings, released a statement warning that anyone criticizing them as illegitimate, as many opposition figures have done, would also be prosecuted.

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Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, presented a decree to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during an official ceremony in Tehran on Monday, as he confirmed Mr. Ahmadinejad's reelection.

[nuconvert]

This is unprecedented.
Also not in attendence was Hassan Khomeini, one of Khomeini’s grandsons, who is pro-regime, but has been siding with the reformists. He was reported to have left the country in order to avoid the ceremony.