Agents of Iran's hardline revolutionary court raided a meeting of opposition activists and arrested more than 30 people, relatives of the detainees said yesterday.
Ahmad Zeidabadi, a leading reformist journalist recently freed from jail on bail after months of detention, was among those arrested in the capital, Tehran, late on Sunday, they said.
The detainees, including dissident leaders Habibollah Payman and Ali Reza Rajaie and several university professors, are members of a loose coalition of Islamic nationalists struggling for greater freedom and democracy in Iran.
The arrests came hours after embattled President Mohammad Khatami called for more tolerance in dealing with critics during a speech in parliament. Iranian authorities made no immediate comment about the relatives' reports of the arrests.
Conservative-led courts have arrested many reformist activists and closed dozens of independent newspapers in a backlash to President Khatami's liberal reforms.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier this month vowed tougher measures against those "seeking to overthrow" the Islamic state.