According to Tehran, members of the government’s Basij militia, ordered to prevent any gatherings, have beaten even small groups of passers-by so the mourners arrived in groups of two or three, muttered brief prayers and left, The Associated Press said, quoting unidentified witnesses.

International condemnation of the authorities’ response to the post-election protests could also be muted since a meeting of the G-8 countries in Trieste, Italy, on Friday seemed divided on how strongly Tehran should be criticized.

While many European countries have forcefully condemned Tehran’s crackdown and President Obama has voiced increasingly stern criticism, Russia, has said isolating Iran would be a mistake, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency. The US delegation at the meeting is headed by William Burns, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs.

On Thursday, Mehdi Karroubi said he did not consider Ahmadinejad’s victory legitimate, but would pursue his complaints through the legal system.

To avoid violent suppression of street protests, people are turning to other ways of expressing dissent. Echoing a symbol of defiance to the shah, the ritual of 10 pm rooftop shouts of “God is great” and new chants of “Death to the dictator” has been growing stronger by the day.

Some people have begun to identify and embarrass plainclothes agents by circulating photographs of those who infiltrated protests and beat demonstrators.

An expatriate Iranian political analyst, who asked not to be identified, said Moussavi’s “only option will be to court behind the scenes and try to muster support in powerful circles, and use them as his proxies to fight for him, and of course they will fight, but not for Moussavi, but because of their disagreement or because they despise Ahmadinejad” and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.