Beirut — Iran's hard-line judiciary today began trials of 100 prominent, moderate politicians and others, accusing the country's main reformist and moderate political groups of working with foreigners trying to foment a popular uprising against the government.

    The opposition immediately decried the charges as groundless and said the mass indictment was filled with errors that shows that it was hastily made up, perhaps by the editors of a the vociferously right-wing newspaper Kayhan.

    "The text of the indictment is so close to the literature of the editorials of Kayhan that even a baked chicken would laugh," said a statement released by the Islamic Iran Participation Front, the country's main reformist political group, according to the news website Norooznews.ir. "The Front calls for the release of the prisoners and giving them access to [a] lawyer."

    Analysts say the confessions read at the trials are meant to lift the morale of hard-liners bombarded by reformist media and Persian-language news channels abroad as well as to frighten opponents and take the wind out of the sails of the protest movement. But as night fell, the capital erupted in angry cries of "Allahu Akbar," or God is great, in what has become a daily ritual of rooftop protest.

    Iranians are bracing for another round of civil protest in the coming days, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is set to be confirmed for a second term by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and sworn in by parliament.

    State-controlled television broadcast images of the three-hour session, in which prisoners clad in jailhouse uniforms filled a courtroom alongside security officials.

    Some of the defendants, who have been held for six weeks without access to lawyers or their families, afterward gave a news conference accusing the opposition of making up charges of vote fraud.

    Iranian authorities accused several politicians, including former Vice President Mohammad Ali Abtahi, of planning riots in advance of the elections that were to be sparked by allegations of vote-rigging.

    " 'Cheating' was the code word for the riot in which people were mobilized to take to the streets," the Fars news agency quoted Abtahi as saying.

    "Of course, I was not in favor of Ahmadinejad's presidency," he was quoted as saying. "I did not accept this election, and by that non-acceptance I prevented the growth of civil society and I betrayed Iranian culture and history."

    Television footage showed the normally jovial cleric appearing gaunt and withdrawn as he sat in the courtroom. A photograph showed Abtahi reading his confession from a handwritten document. Reformist news websites quoted his wife as saying he had been drugged. His daughter told BBC's Persian-language service that his lawyer had been barred from the proceedings.

    In past years, Iranian dissidents held in solitary confinement and subject to grueling interrogations were forced to videotape or sign confessions admitting political or sexual transgressions as a condition for their release or transfer to general population wards.

    Human rights activists, international monitors and Iranian legal authorities criticize such jailhouse confessions as not up to international or local standards.

    "These confessions are illegal and what the defendants say is baseless," said Khalil Bahramian, a prominent Tehran human rights lawyer. "Instead, the confession-takers and those who ordered the forced confessions and all involved in this show trial should be brought to justice."

    Bahramian said the timing of the confessions were meant to distract public attention before Ahmadinejad's inauguration and silence dissidents.

    But few appeared cowed today. Reformists immediately condemned the proceedings as a sham by hard-liners meant to criminalize opposition to Ahmadinejad's disputed election win, which spurred seven weeks of unrest.

    "The electoral coup d'etat fomented by hard-liners has entered a new phase with the ridiculous massive show trial of a group of detainees," the Islamic Iran Participation Front statement said, blasting Fars as "the propaganda arm and mouthpiece of the coup."

    The leading reformist challenger, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, quickly issued a statement denying that the political movement built on his presidential campaign had connections to the West or was seeking to undermine the Islamic Republic. "This righteous and spiritual movement does not have the least link with foreigners and it is 100% domestic," he said, according to his website, Ghalamnews.ir.

    The office of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a powerful cleric, dismissed the confessions "as sheer lies," adding, "It is not clear how and under what conditions they have been expressed."

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    Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.