IRAN: New amateur video surfaces amid election protests

June 22, 2009 6:36 PM PT

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The International Alliance of Iranian Students provides the link to this video clip, said to show motorcycle-mounted anti-riot police dispersing protesters as they attempt to march today to Haft Tir Square.

The authenticity of the footage, which was posted on YouTube, could not be independently verified.

The Times’ Ramin Mostaghim and Borzou Daragahi report today that heavy contingents of security forces safeguarded key downtown squares, including Haft Tir, where police using tear gas chased off a group of about 200 demonstrators.

The student alliance describes itself as an organization ‘composed of intellectuals, students and political activists all with the common goal of establishing a secular and democratic government based on popular vote.’

-- Alexandra Zavis in Los Angeles

Babylon & Beyond

Alexandra Zavis

Alexandra Zavis is a former writer and editor on the Los Angeles Times’ Foreign Desk who has reported from more than 40 countries. She spent a decade with the Associated Press, covering Liberia, Sierra Leone, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other war-torn places. After joining The Times in 2006, she has served as a Baghdad correspondent and as a California reporter covering poverty and veterans issues. She is a recipient of the American Academy of Diplomacy’s Arthur Ross Award for distinguished reporting on foreign affairs and was part of teams of reporters awarded the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi Award for foreign correspondence and APME’s International Perspective Award. She is a graduate of Oxford University and City University in London.