VIENNA – Celebrated Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf alleged Saturday that the Iranian election result had been fixed by the country’s interior ministry.Makhmalbaf said he was asked to act as the spokesman of defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Moussavi’s campaign abroad after their press offices were attacked and shut down by security forces in Tehran Friday.
The cinematographer – best known for his film about Afghanistan, “Kandahar” – said that the interior ministry had changed the outcome of Friday’s elections in President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s favour.
In a statement issued in Vienna, the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran quoted Makhmalbaf as saying in Paris that “last night interior ministry officials told Moussavi and his staff that he has won the elections but they should not make it public yet”.
The ministry on Saturday publicly declared the incumbent Ahmadinejad as the winner, as he collected some 64 percent of the vote. His main rival Moussavi, who has also alleged that there were large-scale irregularities, gained 31 percent.