TEHRAN, JULY 19: Iran's pro-democracy students today said that they would meet representatives from Iran's top security body to demand that those responsible for a bloody police-led assault on student hostels be prosecuted.A student leader told Reuters that the meeting later today with the Supreme National Council for Security follows a series of consultations between student leaders and senior Shiite Muslim clerics in the holy city of Qom.He said student leaders also held talks with the ministers of intelligence and interior about the raid on the student hostel by police and conservative vigilantes earlier this month, which ignited six days of protest and culminated in riots in central Tehran.``We will demand the identification of those responsible for the attack and those who took part in the attack against the dormitory,'' said the student leader, who asked not to be identified.He said student groups had put the number arrested in connection with the unrest at about 1,400 but said many of those detained for taking part in the riots were not students.``A large number of the 1,400 are not students but the people who attacked buses and public buildings, and this was not our wish. We asked students sitting in not to leave the university. Unfortunately, some groups tried to take advantage of the sit-ins and engaged in riots.''Iranian authorities say the unrest, some of the worst since the 1979 Islamic revolution, was largely the work of ``deviants'' encouraged and financed by hostile foreign powers. Yesterday, the intelligence ministry said it had detained a student activist, Manouchehr Mohammadi, for fomenting the unrest.The ministry said Mohammadi had recently travelled to the United States and Turkey, where he held private meetings with ``counter-revolutionaries''. It said he had travelled to the United States with a colleague, Gholamreza Mohajerinejad, but it was not clear whether he was also detained.Police and hardline vigilantes ran through the hostels of Tehran University on July 8 to crack down on a peaceful protest by pro-democracy students against the suspension of a leading moderate newspaper by a conservative court.Students say many were injured and at least five were killed. The authorities have so far confirmed only one death.The crackdown sparked days of increasingly angry protests on the university campus and sympathy rallies in many cities across Iran to demand the arrest of those responsible and the sacking of the hardline national police chief.The authorities outlawed further protests and charged that foreign hands, notably the United States and Israel, were manipulating the crisis.The students have said they would not call further protests until their leaders met members of the Supreme National Security Council.
