Baton-wielding security forces arrested at least 60...

Baton-wielding security forces arrested at least 60 people in the Iranian capital, a city official said, as thousands gathered in and around Tehran University to call for political reform. The demonstration, which coincided with National Students' Day, was the most significant sign in recent weeks that ordinary Iranians were willing to join students in the largest pro-reform protests in the Islamic Republic for over three years. "Around 60 to 70 people have been arrested, most of whom are being questioned," Ali Taala, general director of security and political affairs at the governor's office in Tehran, told the students' news agency ISNA. He said the street demonstration, unlike a rally held by students within the university campus, had not been authorized and was therefore illegal. Most of those arrested were not students, he said. Witnesses said at least 2,000 people began congregating in the streets around the university watched by several hundred riot and regular police. The mixed gathering of young and old, men and women - many of whom wore the traditional black head-to-toe garment known as the chador - occasionally chanted slogans such as "Political prisoners must be freed!" Baton-wielding police made several charges, forcing people to dart into side streets and seek shelter in nearby buildings. Late in the evening a crowd of about 500 relatives and friends of those arrested gathered outside a central Tehran police station, clamoring for their release, another witness told Reuters. Inside the university during the afternoon about 3,000 students chanted "Death to the Taliban in Kabul and Tehran" and called for a referendum on Iran's political future. The rally was marked by sporadic violence as students and hardline Islamic militia hurled stones at one another over the high university fence. Police placed a cordon of buses around the campus to hamper the stone throwers and block the students from view. The student rallies, which began early in November, were sparked by a death sentence imposed on a reformist academic but quickly took on wider political significance. "Referendum, referendum!" the students chanted as they marched, clapping and whistling, through the campus. "Our national interests should be determined by the direct vote of the people," said Mousavi Panah, a member of Tehran University's Islamic Students' Association. The death sentence against history lecturer Hashem Aghajari, imposed for his questioning of Iran's clerical rule, was appealed against on December 2.