Ayatollah Montazeri buried in Qom amid protests protest (1st Lead)

Dec 21, 2009, 8:46 GMT

Tehran - Iranian dissident cleric Grand Ayatollah Hossein- Ali Montazeri, who died at the age of 87, was buried Monday in Qom.

According to witnesses and opposition websites, tens of thousands of people, including a large number of local opposition figures, attended the funeral and turned it into a political rally.

Witnesses in Qom said there was a massive police deployment in the religious city, 130 kilometres south of the capital, Tehran.

Websites said that there had been clashes between the opposition and supporters of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad but witnesses in Qom could not yet confirm the reports.

As the foreign media was once again banned from covering the funeral, there was no way to verify the various reports by the opposition websites.

Witnesses, however, confirmed that both Mir-Hossein Moussavi, the leader of the opposition Green Movement, and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi attended the ceremony,

It was unclear whether the other two opposition leaders, former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, planned to attend.

Other unconfirmed reports on reformist websites said a group of opposition supporters was blocked by police on their way from Tehran to Qom.

Montazeri, who died Saturday night, was the designated heir of the leader of the Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, but was dismissed in March 1989 for criticizing the Islamic system.

He was also a fierce critic of President Ahmadinejad and accused his government of dictatorship after his disputed re-election in June.