Tehran, Dec. 29 (ANI): The killing of former Iranian presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi’s nephew on Sunday was a “target assassination” by the government during anti-government protests in Tehran, a spokesman of the Iranian opposition leader has alleged.

The Christian Science Monitor quoted Mohsen Makhmalbaf as saying that Seyd Ali Mousavi was shot through the heart.

He added that Mousavi, who lives in exile in Paris, had been threatened before his murder to cease his political activities.

“The style of his killing was assassination rather than just a chance shooting in the middle of a protest. A car goes to his house, five men get out and shoot him in the stomach from close up,” says Delbar Tavakoli, an exiled Iranian journalist living in Turkey.

According to reports, authorities were carrying out forensic tests on his and four other bodies, preventing them from being buried within 24 hours as is customary in Islamic tradition.

The bodies were “retained in order to complete forensic and police examinations and find more leads on this suspicious incident,” the official IRNA news agency reported.

The Mousavi family earlier said that their relative’s body was removed from Tehran’s Ibn Sina hospital where it was being held after opposition supporters clashed with a strong police presence outside the hospital yesterday evening.

On Sunday, more than 1.000 people were arrested, including high-profile journalists, human rights and women’s activists, relatives of those killed Sunday, and reformist politicians. (ANI)