TEHRAN: More than two million people are expected to attend the 21st anniversary on Friday of the death of the Islamic republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with Iran’s supreme leader to make a speech, officials said.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will lead Muslim Friday prayers at his late predecessor’s shrine in south Tehran, a year after his decisive sermon in support of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election.
The massive mobilization comes a week before the June 12 anniversary of the election.
"More than two million pilgrims are expected to arrive for the ceremonies via 49,600 buses and minibuses," Colonel Hadi Hashemi, commander of Tehran’s traffic police was quoted by Donaye Eghtesad daily on Thursday as saying.
Officials said some 750,000 people are expected to be transported from around Iran, while 1,250,000 are to come from Tehran province, which has some 14 million people.
Media have reported that Ahmadinejad and Hassan Khomeini, grandson of the man who toppled the US-backed shah in 1979, would also give addresses.
The address by Khamenei will be his first Friday sermon since one last June 19 in which he openly defended Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
Iran was rocked by widespread and deadly street unrest immediately after the poll, which Ahmadinejad’s opponents said was rigged.
Security forces cracked down heavily, with dozens of protesters killed, hundreds arrested and scores of prominent reformists, journalists and rights campaigners put on trial — many receiving stiff jail sentences.
The two main opposition figures — Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi — and eight reformist opposition groups have requested permission to stage a rally on the anniversary of Ahmadinejad’s re-election.
