Human rights groups call on Iran to end house arrests

Six leading human rights organizations have called on Iran to the end the "arbitrary" house arrest of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who have been cut off from the outside world for nearly two years without being put on trial, The Guardian reports.

In mid-February 2011, following calls for street protests in solidarity with the pro-democracy movements in Egypt and Tunisia, dubbed the Arab spring, Iranian authorities placed Mousavi and Karroubi, along with their wives, Zahra Rahnavard and Fatemeh Karroubi, under house arrest.

Security forces initially blocked access to the houses of each couple in Tehran and did not allow them to leave, or their family members to enter the premises. Within a few weeks, the authorities who had surrounded the area entered the residences, ransacking rooms and confiscating documents, limiting the movements of the opposition leaders in an unprecedented fashion. Since then the authorities have released Fatemeh Karroubi from house arrest but increased the restrictions on the remaining three.

Earlier this week security officials in Iran picked up two daughters of Mousavi, Zahra and Narges, and one of Karroubi's sons, Hossein, from their houses in Tehran and questioned them for several hours before releasing them. They were apparently under pressure for speaking out about the plight of their parents.