Freed Tehran Mayor Denies Allegations of Corruption

The mayor of Tehran has denied allegations of corruption after his release from detention, the official Iranian news agency reported Thursday.

Gholamhossein Karbaschi was freed Wednesday on the order of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who intervened to check a growing power struggle between hard-line and moderate factions in the government.

Karbaschi, a key ally of moderate President Mohammad Khatami, was detained April 4 on orders of Iran’s chief justice, Ayatollah Mohammad Yazdi, a hard-liner opposed to Khatami’s reforms.

Khamenei, a hard-liner, called on Iranians to support the judiciary.

“If there were no judicial branch [of government], justice would not have any foundations or criteria,” Khamenei said in a live radio broadcast Thursday.

Karbaschi was released a day after 4,000 students dem-onstrated in Tehran in support of the mayor. Riot police wielding batons broke up the protest and arrested 30 people.

Prosecutors accused Karbaschi of misappropriating public funds in a wide-ranging corruption scandal in Tehran.

But his arrest was widely seen as a bid by hard-liners to topple key officials of the president, whose moves to ease social restrictions and end Iran’s international isolation are popular.

Karbaschi said Thursday that “no form of embezzlement or misappropriation of public funds have taken place,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.

The mayor did acknowledge, however, that there may have been problems in the city’s finances in general. He is still expected to face trial, possibly in the next couple of weeks.

Khamenei ordered the mayor’s release after receiving a letter from Khatami warning that Karbaschi’s continued detention “can only serve to complicate matters . . . and eventually lead to the undermining of all forces.”