Word: basiji
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...defiantly took to the streets. Participants of the Qods Day protests told TIME that crowd sizes well equaled the large protests that took place in past months. Just as in previous demonstrations, old and young individuals from various social backgrounds attended the rallies, clashing with security forces and plainclothes Basiji militias and loudly voicing slogans during marches near the site of the President's speech at the University of Tehran's Friday prayers...
...challenging the Iranian government. After the announcement of the result triggered massive demonstrations in June, Karroubi was one of the first major figures to blame the government for the violence - a brave act considering that the state media was calling the demonstrations riots instigated by foreign powers. And when Basiji militiamen roughed him up on the way to Friday prayers last month, Karroubi spoke out again. "They want to create an atmosphere of threat and terror so that people are kept silent," he said. And despite the growing atmosphere of official intolerance for challenges to the postelection order, Karroubi...
...demonstrators marched to protest the inauguration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to a second term, to object to the renewed mass trial of political dissidents and, on another occasion, simply to take advantage of a religious holiday when many devout Basij members would be in mosques. (See pictures of the Basiji terror in plain clothes...
...more conservative countryside to quash planned street demonstrations. But now they seem here to stay. They operate out of the city's mosques, from which they venture out to patrol the streets at all hours of the night on motorcycles, often in small gangs. On a recent night, three Basiji were seen at 2 a.m. standing next to their parked motorcycles on a residential street...
...street protests, they barged through the crowd Mad Max-style, brandishing wooden batons. Now they are playing more of an intelligence-gathering role, and consequently they have become much harder to detect. In recent weeks, many have shaved their telltale beards and shed their secondhand clothes; one group of Basiji recently spotted in north Tehran wore collared shirts, snappy dress shoes and jeans, allowing them to blend in with the trendy crowd. (See a video of TIME's Joe Klein discussing Iran's election...