TEHRAN (Reuters) -- Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Musavi has said that the condition of the country's prisons showed that Iran needed a "deep change," his website reported.
"What happens in Iran's prisons these days clearly shows the necessity of a deep change in the country," the Ghalamnews quoted Musavi as saying.
"Could America harm Iran...as much as these events in prisons have damaged the [1979 Islamic] revolution and the country?" he asked.
Musavi wrote on his website on August 9 that he had been told by senior officials that some young men and women detained in jail after postelection protests had been raped.
Iran's police chief had previously acknowledged that some detainees had been tortured.
"Based on parliament's investigations, detainees have not been raped or sexually abused in Iran's Kahrizak and Evin prisons. Such claims are totally baseless," Iran's state television quoted the conservative speaker of Iran's parliament, Ali Larijani, as saying on August 12.