The manager of a Tehran cemetery denied it carried out secret burials of people who died in post-election unrest, as alleged by some reformist media, the Mehr news agency said on Monday.
Pro-reform opposition website Norooznews reported on Saturday that more than 40 people were buried on July 12 and 15 in unidentified graves in block 302 of the Behesht Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran.
But Mahmoud Rezaiyan, managing director of the Behesht Zahra Organisation, said these reports were only ”rumours”.
”In recent days we have not received any unidentified body and we were not forced to issue burial permits either,” Rezaiyan said.
”The report that there are mass graves is not true.”
According to Norooznews, the graves were only marked by the burial permit numbers. It also added that bodies, which were frozen, were brought to the cemetery from an ”industrial cold storage” in southwestern Tehran.
It said the secret burials were hurriedly done to avoid spreading of reports that bodies of dead protesters were being held in a cold storage after a frozen corpse was delivered to a family.
Officially about 30 people were killed in the violence that erupted after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Opposition groups claim that 69 people died in the crackdown on protesters.
They also say some protesters have been raped, tortured and beaten in jails. Iranian authorities dismiss these claims.
About 4 000 protesters were initially arrested, with hundreds still held in custody.
Among those initially arrested were scores of reformist leaders, political activists and journalists. — AFP
