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Mousavi camp
issues fraud report,
demands probe
TEHERAN: The campaign of Iranian opposition
leader Mir Hossein Mousavi published a report
on Tuesday listing claims of fraud in the June
12 presidential poll and demanding a “truth
commission.”
The three-page report, posted on Mousavi’s
official website Kalemeh.ir, charged that the
“government put large-scale measures in favour
of its candidate” President Mahmoud Amhad-
inejad, who defeated runner-up Mousavi.
The Mousavi committee which drafted the
report charged that members of committees
tasked with organising the election had been
chosen from “among supporters of Ahmadine-
jad.”
“Ballots were printed the day of the election
without any serial number, in an unprecedented
action in the history of the country,” the report
said.
The Mousavi camp also expressed “serious
doubts” that ballot boxes were empty when
they arrived at polling stations because repre-
sentatives of the candidates were not present
when the boxes were sealed.
It also claimed that the number of official
stamps used to validate votes exceeded the
number of voting centres, and explained that
this alone “could contribute to fraud.”
According to the report, representatives of
presidential candidates were also prevented for
various reasons from being present in voting
centres in order to monitor the election.
Mousavi’s campaign committee demanded
the creation of a “commission of truth and jus-
tice ... acceptable to all the parties, to examine
the entire election process” and shed light on
the operation.
A statement posted earlier on Mousavi’s
official website said the committee would be
releasing “a full report of electoral fraud and
irregularities to the people.”
That statement came after the Guardians
Council, which had until yesterday to examine
complaints of vote-rigging filed by the oppo-
sition, ruled out annulling the results of the
election.
But the council later asked supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khomeini for a five-day extension,
a request granted by the overall head of the
Islamic republic. – AFP
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Khamenei vows no retreat
on Iran election result
TEHERAN: Iran’s Supreme Leader Aya-
tollah Ali Khamenei declared yesterday
that a disputed election result would
stand, despite street protests that Iranian
officials say Britain and the United States
have incited.
“I had insisted and will insist on im-
plementing the law on the election issue,”
Khamenei said. “Neither the establish-
ment nor the nation will yield to pressure
at any cost.”
Now that police and religious militia
have regained apparent control of the
Metro streets after the biggest anti-government
was cited protests since the 1979 Islamic revolu-
tion, Iran’s leadership is blaming the
for safety discontent on foreign powers.
issues in “Britain, America and the Zionist
2006 regime (Israel) were behind the recent
unrest in Teheran,” Interior Minister
pg 11 Sadeq Mahsouli said, according to the
semi-official Fars news agency.
Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki
said Iran was weighing whether to down-
grade ties with Britain after each country
expelled two diplomats this week.
He also announced he had “no plans”
to attend a G8 meeting in Italy this week
on Afghanistan.
His remarks, a day after US President
Barack Obama said he was “appalled
and outraged” by the clampdown in Iran,
provided more evidence of rising tension
with the West.
French Foreign Minister Bernard
Kouchner, asked if Paris planned to cut
ties with Teheran, said it had no such
plans but could do so if Iran continued to
expel diplomats.
Western diplomats had seen the June
25-27 Group of Eight talks as a rare
chance for the G8 to discuss with regional
powers such as Iran shared goals for
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Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The unexpected upheaval in Iran has
thrown a spanner into Obama’s plans to
engage the republic in a substantive dia-
logue over its nuclear programme, which
Teheran says is peaceful but which the
West suspects is for bomb-making.
Security forces have clamped a tight
grip on Teheran to prevent more rallies
against the June 12 poll, which reform-
ists say was rigged to return President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power and
keep out moderate former Prime Minister
Mirhossein Mousavi.
The furore over the election has exposed
deep rifts within Iran’s political elite, with
Khamenei solidly backing Ahmadinejad
against Mousavi, who has the support of
former presidents Akbar Hashemi Rafsan-
jani and Mohammad Khatami.
Many of Iran’s senior clerics in the
holy city of Qom have stayed out of the
political fray, although Grand Ayatollah
Hossein Ali Montazeri has called for
three days of national mourning for those
killed in protests.
Montazeri was once named succes-
sor to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but
fell out with the father of the revolution
Nursery pupils excluded
for being sexually explicit
LONDON: A survey by Ofsted, the educa-
tion standards watchdog, says more than
one in five primary schools have reported
“inappropriate sexual behaviour” by chil-
dren aged four to seven. At eight schools,
children had been excluded as a result of
their behaviour. The incidents have raised
fears about child abuse, although some
teachers’ leaders believe the “sexploita-
tion” of children by commercial organisa-
tions could be to blame.
Two schools expressed concern about
a “worrying lack of response” by local au-
thority support services to “concerns about
seemingly serious incidents”. One school
was told a five-year-old was “too young for
a referral and he might grow out of it” .
The report calls on authorities to record
details of each child excluded for sexu-
ally inappropriate behaviour and monitor
all subsequent actions taken by support
services. Mick Brookes, the National Asso-
ciation of Headteachers general secretary,
said: “Some of it could be innocent childish
behaviour but there are some quite worry-
ing things going on.”
The survey was prompted by figures
showing that more than 4,000 children
Miami group charged
in RM350m Medicare fraud
China MIAMI: A band of conspirators in Miami
defrauded the US healthcare system by
creating phony clinics that churned out
US$100 million (RM350 million) of medical
bills in five states, federal prosecutors said
10,000 on Tuesday. Some of the purported clinics
9,000 were empty storefronts with handwritten
8,000 signs while others existed only as post of-
7,000
fice boxes, but none provided any actual
6,000
Eight defendants were indicted on
5,000 charges ranging from conspiracy to commit
4,000 Medicare fraud and money laundering to
3,000 aggravated identity theft.
2,000
Medicare is a federal health insurance
plan for the elderly. Medicare fraud indict-
1,000
ments are common in Florida, which has
0 the nation’s largest percentage of elderly
residents, but prosecutors said this case
theSun | THURSDAY JUNE 25 2009
before he died in 1989. He has spent years
under house arrest in Qom.
Up to 20 people have been killed in the
protests, according to Iran’s state English-
language Press TV. Amateur footage of
clashes with security men, and of some
of the deaths, has been posted on the
Internet and viewed around the world.
Reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who
came last in the election, has urged Ira-
nians to mourn the dead today.
Mousavi’s wife, Zahra Rahnavard, de-
manded the immediate release of people
detained since the election – who include
25 employees of her husband’s newspaper
– and criticised the presence of armed
forces in the streets, his website reported.
“It is my duty to continue legal protests
to preserve Iranian rights,” Rahnavard,
who actively campaigned with her hus-
band before the election, was quoted as
saying.
Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein
Mohseni-Ejei said some British passport-
holders had been involved in “riots”, Fars
news agency reported. One detainee was
“disguised as a journalist” and had been
“collecting information needed by the
enemies”, he said. – Reuters
aged under five were excluded from school
last year, 1,450 for assaults on adults and
1,010 for attacking children.
Some children had been excluded more
than 10 times in a year. Reported incidents
included biting, a persistent refusal to fol-
low instructions, swearing, running away
from staff, kicking or hitting staff, climbing
the school fence and throwing chairs.
Inspectors examined the records of 13
children who had been excluded for more
than 10 days or more than five times in a
year and found all were boys and five had
special needs.
The inspectors visited 27 schools that
had not excluded any pupils. They attrib-
uted their success to close relationships
with parents and clear behaviour policies,
and praised the schools for introducing
“circle time” where pupils were encour-
aged to talk together about anything
troubling them.
Brookes said a measure of the increas-
ing behaviour problems came from a
teacher interview with a three-year-old and
his mother at an early years centre, during
which the child told his parent: “F*** off,
you bitch!” – The Independent
was notable for its scale. “This case is re-
markable, not only in terms of the amounts
stolen from Medicare, but also in terms of
its sophistication and geographic breadth,”
said Jeffrey Sloman, acting US attorney for
the Southern District of Florida. “These de-
fendants attempted to steal approximately
US$100 million from the elderly, blind and
disabled by using multiple store-front clinics
in five different states and then laundered
their profits through local check cashing
stores,” he added.
The 20-count indictment alleges that
defendant Michel De Jesus Huarte set up six
purported clinics in the Miami area, recruit-
ing people whose names would appear on
the paperwork. They were paid large sums
of cash with the understanding they would
flee to Cuba to avoid capture. – Reuters