Cleric greets well-wishers on first day of freedom

QOM, Iran -- Iran's senior dissident cleric ventured outside his home Thursday for the first time in five years, receiving a hero's welcome from a crowd of tearful supporters gathered to celebrate his freedom from house arrest.

Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri -- who began his liberty with a dawn visit to a holy shrine -- remained defiant of the hard-line rulers who confined him for saying supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was not competent to issue religious rulings.

"I accepted no commitment or accepted any condition" for my freedom, he said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, seated in a low chair before well-wishers sitting cross-legged on Persian carpets.

The comments suggested that Montazeri, once in line to be Iran's supreme leader, was keeping his options open to resume political activities. "I only bow before God, and no one else," he said, adding that he was happy to be free.

"No one can trample on the rights of other people through insults and bad behavior," he said.

Dozens of clerics and hundreds of ordinary Iranians packed into the modest home of the ayatollah, some moved to tears at their first glimpse of him. Well-wishers overflowed into the street, and those close to Montazeri jockeyed to kiss his hand.

Despite recent reports of failing health, Montazeri, 81, appeared happy and well, joking with family members and guests and munching on sweets handed out to celebrate his freedom.

"God has bestowed on us this chance of meeting him today. Words cannot express my feelings of meeting the ayatollah after so long," said follower Abbas Ali Fateh, as others wept quietly in happiness.

Montazeri, once hand-picked to succeed the leader of the 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was disgraced and banished from the political scene after criticizing the waves of executions that followed shortly after the revolution.

In November 1997, he was exiled to his home in the holy city of Qom, 80 miles southwest of Tehran, after saying the powers of the omnipotent Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who became supreme leader after Khomeini's death in 1989, should be limited.

Montazeri's house arrest was lifted on the orders of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's highest decision-making body, because of his age and declining health. The decision was likely compelled by a fear of popular protest had he died under house arrest.

At dawn Thursday, Montazeri visited the shrine of the Shiite Muslmim saint Massoumeh in the heart of Qom, which also houses the grand seminary that attracts Shiites worldwide.

Earlier, Revolutionary Guards loyal to the hard-line cabal that holds sway in Iran worked in darkness dismantling the checkpoint and iron bars that had turned Montazeri's home into a guarded prison only close relatives could visit.

Montazeri is among only a few grand ayatollahs, the senior-most theologians of the Shiite faith. And while his house was open to the public Thursday, the mosque where he used to give sermons remained closed.

After he was placed under house arrest, the state-run media stripped Montazeri of his religious title, describing him as a "simple-minded" cleric. Discussion of Montazeri was strongly discouraged, references to him in schoolbooks were removed, and streets named after him were renamed.

But many Iranians, including the senior clergy that sits in Qom but is divided in its support for the hard-liners, had been calling for his release.

Khamenei -- the beacon of the conservative clerics, and who has final say on all state matters -- apparently approved the decision to lift the house arrest.

Earlier this month, more than 100 Iranian lawmakers in a legislature dominated by pro-democracy supporters advocated for an end to Montazeri's confinement.