Iran buries dissident cleric Montazeri
Updated on 21 December 2009
Thousands of anti-government protesters clash with police after the funeral of Iran's leading dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri in the holy city of Qom.
Crowds gathered at the city yesterday to mourn the 87-year-old who died on Saturday night.
The cleric is seen by many as the spiritual patron of the opposition movement that gathered momentum after the disputed presidential election in June - which has proved resilient despite repeated efforts to suppress it.
Montazeri called President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election a fraud. Various reformist and social media websites have reported that security forces clashed with the protesters following the funeral.
The Norooz website said there was a heavy presence of police around the house of the late cleric and that protesters threw stones at them.
Another reformist website Jaras said hundreds of thousands of people joined a procession for Montazeri, an architect of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the US-backed shah.
"They were shouting slogans in his support and also in support of (opposition leader) Mirhossein Mousavi," Jaras said.
Ayande website, seen as close to conservative politician Mohsen Rezaie, said: "The burial ceremony has come to an end and the crowd are in the streets around the shrine demonstrating and shouting anti-government slogans."
The website Kaleme has said that crowds carrying "green symbols" had chanted: "Today is the day of mourning and the green Iranian nation is the owner of this mourning," referring to the colour adopted by the opposition.
Foreign media have been banned from reporting on protests and also from travelling to Qom for Montazeri's funeral.
Riot police are believed to be out in force to in Qom, 80 miles south of Tehran for the funeral of the senior Shi'ite cleric who had been a thorn in the side of the establishment during his life.
