Iran's foremost clerical dissident was freed from house arrest after five years and made an unrepentant speech to hundreds of supporters Thursday.
Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, 80, was once considered successor-in-waiting to the founder of the Islamic Republic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. He was confined in 1997 after saying Khomeini's actual successor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not competent to issue religious rulings.
House arrest was lifted late Wednesday after relatives said his health was failing. Analysts said hard-line authorities feared unrest might erupt if he died while still restricted to his home in the holy city of Qom, 75 miles southwest of Tehran.
Montazeri Thursday went to a small mosque near his house where he used to make speeches before house arrest, and gave there his first public address for five years to some 600 supporters, including some senior clerics.
"God, whose property we all are, has given to all believers religious leadership but not unlimited leadership," said an emotional Montazeri, wearing clerical robes and a white turban.
The crowd answered him by chanting "our religious leader, God bless you." Montazeri left the mosque escorted by Revolutionary Guards.
Conservative newspapers have said Montazeri promised to refrain from political activity in return for his freedom.
But the dissident told supporters at his home: "There have been no conditions. These rumors that my children have asked for my pardon -- all are lies and baseless.
"Nobody has asked for anything and I have never asked anything of anybody, except God."
Montazeri Thursday also went with his two sons to visit a shrine where a third son, killed by a bomb at Islamic Republican Party headquarters in 1981, is buried.
He remained an influential figure during confinement, issuing statements calling for pluralism and democracy and demanding limits on the power of Supreme Leader Khamenei, Iran's most powerful figure with the final say on all state matters.
ERSTWHILE HEIR
Montazeri became Iran's most prominent clerical dissident after Ayatollah Khomeini dismissed him as his designated heir in 1988 for criticizing the execution of political prisoners and other human rights abuses.
He completed his alienation from the ruling establishment in 1997 with a damning critique of the institution of supreme clerical rule and of Khamenei.
For the past five years Revolutionary Guards have guarded his home and prevented Montazeri, a diabetic with heart problems, from receiving any visitors other than members of his immediate family.
A police booth outside his home was removed Wednesday night.
Scores of reformist activists, journalists and academics have been jailed in recent years by the Iran's hard-line judiciary.
Reformist President Mohammed Khatami has faced tough opposition in his attempts at social and political reform from conservatives entrenched in positions of power.