AFP: Ahmadinejad heckled

Captains Quarters excerpts a report that states that Ahmadinejad was heckled at the Holocaust conference, but the trail of links doesn't seem to lead to a current story that says that anymore. Perhaps there was some confusion over the circumstances of the following incident:

Iranian students have disrupted a speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a prestigious Tehran university, setting fire to his picture and shouting "death to the dictator."

Ahmadinejad was giving a speech to students at the Amir Kabir University, the scene of a protest the day before by hundreds of students to denounce a crackdown on a reformist-led university association.

"Some students chanted radical slogans and inflamed the atmosphere of the meeting," said the semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to Ahmadinejad on Monday.

"A small number of students shouted 'death to the dictator' and smashed cameras of state television but they were confronted by a bigger group of students in the hall chanting: 'We support Ahmadinejad'," it said.

It was the latest in a series of student demonstrations in recent days, the first time in least two years that such protests have taken place on this scale at Iranian universities.

Ahmadinejad, an ultra-conservative who won a shock election victory in 2005, responded by describing those students chanting the slogans as an "oppressive" minority.

"A small number of people who claim there is oppression are creating oppression and do not let the majority hear (my) words," he said.

The state television report on Ahmadinejad's speech made no mention of the incident, showing only snippets of his address as the president spoke up to make himself heard over a clearly noisy audience.

According to the student news agency ISNA, Ahmadinejad responded to the students' chants of "students can die but they do not accept degradation" by lashing out at the United States.

"Today, the worst type of dictatorship in the world is the American dictatorship which has been clothed in human rights," he said.

"Our students are free and they fight and die but do not accept the foreigners' missions or bend to them," he added.

"It is my honour to burn for the sake of the nation's ideals and defend the system," Ahmadinejad was quoted as telling protesters who set fire his picture, ISNA said.

"Americans must know that even if Ahmadinejad's body is burnt a thousand times for this purpose, Ahmadinejad will not retreat even a centimetre from these ideals."

The Iranian president's speech was also interrupted by firecrackers, ISNA said.

Tags: Ahmadinejad, Iran, Holocaust-denial, slime-buckets