Inquiry ordered into secret burials

Beirut: An Iranian lawmaker vowed on Saturday to examine allegations that dozens of unidentified people killed in the recent post-election unrest secretly were buried in the country's largest cemetery last month.

The reformist website Norooznews.org on Friday cited an unnamed employee of the capital's Behesht Zahra cemetery as saying that 44 unidentified corpses were buried under heavy security July 12 and 15.

Majid Nasirpour, a reformist lawmaker who serves on Parliament's Social Affairs Committee, filed a request for an inquiry into the mass burial allegation, the website Parlemannews.ir reported.

"This news story needs to be verified," he told the website on Saturday. "I will ask the committee to investigate the allegations." The number of people killed in weeks of violence is disputed: Iranian officials claim that as few as 20 died, with nine of them pro-government militiamen. Iranian opposition figures say that at least 69 have been killed, while Western officials in Tehran, the capital, estimate the number of dead nationwide to be in the hundreds.

Norooznews, the online incarnation of a respected newspaper shut down by authorities in 2002, said it had obtained the registration numbers of the burial permits to back up its claim. The website had reported earlier that bodies were piled up at a mortuary in southwest Tehran.

Iranian authorities have made a concerted effort to play down the numbers and accounts of those killed in the violence, pressuring families not to hang mourning banners on their homes and ordering mosques not to allow memorial services.

Nonetheless, mourners on Thursday night marked the 40th-day burial anniversary of Sohrab Arabi, a 19-year-old who was apparently shot in the chest during a June 15 demonstration.