Top Iranian reformer jailed for six years: reports

By Fredrik Dahl and Hashem Kalantari

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A reformist former vice president accused of fomenting widespread street unrest after Iran's June election has been sentenced to six years in jail, Iranian media said on Sunday.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, one of dozens of leading moderates detained after the disputed poll on charges of trying to topple the clerical establishment, would be the most senior reformer to be jailed so far after the vote more than five months ago.

Abtahi, a cleric who was vice president for parliament and legal affairs during Mohammad Khatami's 1997-2005 presidency, was officially informed about his sentence on Saturday, Jahan-e Eqtesad daily said. Other newspapers also carried the report.

They cited his daughter Fatemeh Abtahi as saying security agents searched Abtahi's Tehran home in his presence, after which he was taken to a court where he was told about the verdict and then returned to jail.

Iran's judiciary said last week that five people have been sentenced to death and 81 have received jail terms of up to 15 years in connection with protests and violence after the vote, but it did not give names. The sentences can be appealed.

The moderate opposition says the poll was rigged to secure the re-election of hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The authorities reject the charge and have portrayed huge opposition protests that erupted after the election as foreign-backed.

"BIG LIE"

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who endorsed Ahmadinejad's election victory, has said it was a crime to question the vote.

The U.N. General Assembly's human rights committee last week condemned Iran for its crackdown on opposition protesters. Tehran's U.N. ambassador sharply criticized the resolution.

Abtahi was a top adviser to pro-reform cleric Mehdi Karoubi, who finished fourth in the June 12 election. The pro-reform Kaleme web site said his lawyer would seek his release on bail.

Thousands of people were detained after the presidential election, which plunged Iran into its most serious internal crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution and exposed widening establishment divisions.

Most have since been released, but more than 100 remain in jail on charges of stoking post-vote unrest. The opposition has denounced what it calls "show trials" held against leading reformers, including also two former deputy ministers.

During a mass trial in August, a semi-official news agency said Abtahi had admitted that the allegations of election fraud had only been a pretext designed to trigger mass protests.

On Saturday, the head of a hardline political party, Mohammad Nabi Habibi, called for opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi to face trial for spreading the "big lie" of vote fraud.

Any legal action against Mousavi, who came second in the election and has vowed to press on with his drive for political reform in Iran, may trigger new street protests by his backers.

Other hardliners have also called for legal action against Mousavi, a moderate former prime minister.

(Editing by Jon Hemming)