Iran Student Leaders Hold Sit-Ins

Student leaders held sit-ins Sunday to protest the detention of classmates following last week’s fierce clashes between pro-clergy militants and anti-government demonstrators, in which police said 520 people were arrested.

The clashes broke out when university marches expanded into protests against the hard-line Islamic clerics who rule Iran. Militants attacked protesters, at one point breaking into dormitories at night and pulling students from their beds.

Police Gen. Mahmoud Japalaqi was quoted as saying Sunday that 520 people were arrested. “Only 10 of them are students and the rest ... are ruffians,” Japalaqi told the government-run daily newspaper Iran.

But student leaders holding sit-ins in front of the parliament and at Tehran University said most of the detainees were classmates. “We believe more than half of those detained are students. I know about three dozen who were either arrested or disappeared,” said student leader Hasan Shoaei.

Inside the reformist-dominated legislature, 166 lawmakers signed a statement denouncing the “savage and ruthless attacks” by the militants and expressing support for the sit-ins.

Some student leaders warned Sunday that a crackdown on protests could make them adopt radical methods.