A son says a leader of Iran's 2009 Green Movement protests will be freed from house arrest

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — One of the leaders of Iran's 2009 Green Movement protests will be released from house arrest in the coming weeks, his son told state media Monday. However, previous speculation that he would be released failed to come true.

Mehdi Karroubi, a Shiite cleric, parliament speaker and two-time presidential candidate, has been held in his home since the 2011 Arab Spring protests.

His son, Hossein Karroubi, told the state-run IRNA news agency that security officials told his father he'd be freed in early April. He did not identify the officials but said Iran's judiciary had issued the order.

There was no immediate acknowledgement of any order concerning the octogenarian Karroubi.

Mehdi Karroubi had backed the 2009 presidential candidacy of Mir Hossein Mousavi, who also was put under house arrest in 2011 after calling for demonstrations in support of protests in Egypt and Tunisia during the Arab Spring. State media was ordered not to discuss them or show their images.

In 2009, Karroubi rallied the public in mass protests over allegations of vote-rigging in hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed reelection as president. Those protests drew millions to the streets and sparked a heavy-handed security crackdown as demonstrators soon demanded the overthrow of Iran's Shiite theocracy and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.