Word: basij
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...Year's Eve, days after the some of the bloodiest confrontations to hit the streets of Tehran since June's disputed election, security forces were still stationed in large numbers at major intersections and squares. Alongside regular uniformed officers stood civilian members of Iran's Basij paramilitary front, many of them teenagers with flossy beards and uncertain looks, lacking shoulder pads and body armor. Their borrowed batons and riot helmets looked incongruously large compared with their skinny frames. Meanwhile, the ranks of the opposition bristled with reports that they now plan to field armored antiriot vehicles purchased from China...
...Reports had at least five dead. One of those killed was the 35-year-old nephew of opposition leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Witnesses say one woman was run down and killed by a Basij member driving a car. And Monday saw a number of opposition figures arrested, including senior aides to Mousavi, as well as reports of more clashes. The opposition website Norooz claimed that police had fired tear gas to disperse a group of Mousavi supporters who were demonstrating outside the hospital where the opposition leader's nephew Seyed Ali Mousavi had been kept. (See pictures of the latest...
...Some had said that a contingent of Iran's Basij paramilitaries had taken over the mosque on the inside long before Khatami's speech was due to begin. Walking up the hill to the mosque, we had seen the now familiar buses which bring in government militias from other areas...
...This had been all but forgotten in the camaraderie of the crowd, but women's screams and the fizz and crackle of a stun baton broke the spell. Two dozen Basij thugs had plowed their way through the crowd below and now faced off with the last of the opposition supporters who were gathered at the gate of the venue...
...each, students have remained defiant at Tehran's oldest university. In addition to showing support for opposition leaders like Mousavi, who ran against Ahmadinejad in the disputed June election, students are demanding the resignation of University of Tehran President Farhad Rahbar because of allegations that he allowed paramilitary Basij forces into the dormitories one evening in June to attack students who were sleeping...