Saham News said members of the Basij, a militia loyal to
supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had been surrounding the house for
days, "savagely assailed" Karoubi's home on Wednesday night.
"These individuals, who seemed to enjoy police
support and protection ... broke Karoubi's windows, spread dye over his house
and tore down the building's surveillance cameras," it said. It did not
report any injuries.
Reuters was unable to confirm the report.
Karoubi, one of the presidential candidates who lost to
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a disputed June 2009 election, has remained a leader of
the reformist "Green" movement opposed to the hard-line government.
He has said he wants to attend an annual day of
anti-Israel rallies known as Qods Day on Friday, something he will not be able
to do if prevented from leaving his house.
"If I am being subjected to aggressions, it is not a
problem since I am a simple cleric and I am holding my life in my hands for the
sake of the ideals of the late Imam (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) and the
public's rightful and legal demands," he said, according to opposition
website Kaleme.
Authorities quelled massive anti-government
demonstrations in the weeks and months after last year's election and there
have been no major rallies since December when eight people were killed in
clashes with security forces.
Opposition leaders have not planned any protests for Qods
Day which is marked by state-organized rally.
But in another possible sign of the authorities'
increased nervousness about opposition activities, Zahra Rahnavard, the wife of
another reformist leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was harassed by a group of men
in civilian clothes asking her about her commitment to the 1979 revolution,
Kaleme said.