Nejad calls for immediate free elections

TEHRAN: Iran´s hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the immediate holding of free presidential and parliamentary elections in a letter to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei published on Thursday.

The call, from a man whose name is synonymous with the bloody repression of mass protests against his controversial 2009 re-election, marked a new act of defiance against a establishment that has long since turned against him. Nejad made no specific reference in his letter to a wave of unrest that swept Iran over the new year but it comes as the country´s divided political factions argue over how to respond.