A conservative Iranian court has charged Deputy Interior Minister Morteza Mobalegh with spreading lies and slander, the official Irna news agency said yesterday.

Mobalegh, a bureaucrat close to reformers, was the senior official in charge of presidential elections in June which the incumbent moderate President Mohammad Khatami won by a landslide.

The charges were brought against Mobalegh by a hardline body responsible for supervising the election process, Irna said. He denied the charges and was released on bail pending further investigations.

Mobalegh's predecessor as deputy at the interior ministry, Mostafa Tajzadeh, a close aide to Khatami, lost his job in March after a hardline judge said he was unfit to hold public office due to his handling of last year's parliamentary elections.