Dozens more Iran vote protesters face trial

Twenty five more Iranian protesters will go on trial Saturday as fresh claims surfaced that several protesters in jail were tortured to death while Khamenei appointed a new chief of judiciary.

"The third session of the elements of recent riots in Tehran will be held on Sunday," a court statement carried by the ISNA news agency said. "In this session charges against 25 defendants...will be presented."

Iran has already put on trial 110 people charged with protesting against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The defendants include top reformists, political activists, a French lecturer and two employees of the French and the British embassies.

The trial of lecturer Clotilde Reiss has finished, although she remains in custody. Securing her release has been a diplomatic priority for Paris, with President Nicolas Sarkozy raising the case with other leaders.

Opposition leaders have denounced the court proceedings as "show trials."

The hearings have angered the international community and heightened political tensions as Iran battles its worst political crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

In this session charges against 25 defendants will be presented

Court statement

Beaten and tortured

Also on Saturday, Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi has charged that several protesters detained in the June election unrest died in prisons after being "beaten and tortured" and made to crawl like animals.

"Unfortunately some of the people who took part in the protests were tortured," Karroubi said on the website of his political party, Etemad Melli.

"I heard they (security forces) stripped people in Kahrizak and made them crawl like animals with prison guards riding on their backs," the reformist cleric said of the detention centre which was closed last month.

He said it was a "shame" for the Islamic republic to indulge in such tactics as "some of those arrested were forced to be naked and piled upon each other" in the prison cells.

"I also heard that while they were being tortured, the protesters were forced to curse their mothers," he added.

In a separate claim in his newspaper Etemad Melli on Saturday, Karroubi also said that "some youngsters who were chanting slogans were beaten in such a way that they lost their lives."

Earlier this week Karroubi alleged that several male and female detainees were also "savagely raped" in prisons. However, these charges were dismissed by parliament speaker Ali Larijani.

Chief of judiciary

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has appointed Hojatoleslam Sadegh Ardeshir Larijani as the country's new chief of the judiciary, state television reported on Saturday.

Larijani, the younger brother of parliament speaker Ali Larijani, replaces Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi and will head the powerful judiciary for five years.

Born in 1960 in Iraq's Shiite holy city of Najaf, Larijani has been a member of the powerful electoral watchdog, the Guardians Council, since 2001. He is the author of several scholarly publications.

Larijani grew up in a religious family. His father, Ayatollah Mirza Hashem Amoli, had escaped persecution during the Pahlavi regime in early 1930s.

The Khamenei decree appointing Larijani called for "quick and easy" justice to be applied under the new judiciary chief.

"It is expected that the judiciary's pillars be healthy, verdicts be certain and decided easily and quickly... the people in charge of this establishment must not fall short of efforts to meet these expectations," it said.