A group of activists have been given temporary leave from prison for the Persian new year, Nowruz Share 66 reddit this Comments (2) Mehdi Karroubi spent 12 hours meeting his family. Photograph: Vahid Salemi/AP It's the Iranian news year, Nowruz and the country is off work for almost two weeks. New clothes have been put on, and children rewarded with cash. Many people are making family visits, a crucial part of the Nowruz tradition. Meanwhile, the opposition leader, Mehdi Karroubi, who was placed under house arrest in February 2011, was allowed to meet his family for the first time in four months. According to his son, Hossein Karroubi, who posted the news of the visit on his Facebook account, the meeting was the first time the family had met Karroubi without the physical presence of the security forces since he was arrested. The meeting lasted 12 hours, and took place at the house where he is being held. Sahamnews, a news website run by the supporters of Karroubi, reported that he had brought up to date with developments in the news, especially those concerning the parliamentary elections, held on 2 March. Karroubi is cut off from independent news sources. The news about Karroubi comes after several activists and journalists were given temporary leave from prison for the Nowruz holiday. Journalist Ali Mousavi Khalkhali, singer Arya Aramnejad, activist Mehdi Khazali and Parvin Mokhtarea, the mother of human rights activist Kouhyar Goudarzi, were among those let out of prison for Nowruz. There was no news on whether Mir Hossein Mousavi, another opposition leader, had been given prison leave. But many political prisoners, including the student activist Zia Nabavi. were denied Nowruz prison leave. The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran (ICHRI), a US-based non-government organisation, said the authorities in the country had refused to give leave to political prisoners. "Judicial authorities have refused to grant furloughs to a large number of political prisoners," reported the ICHRI. "Many banned from visiting their families believe the selective granting of furloughs is a means of applying more pressure on prisoners and their families. While some prisoners are regularly granted furlough, a number of prominent political prisoners, including Zia Nabavi, have been denied furlough for the entirety of their sentence." In a separate incident, the ICHRI warned against the imminent execution of Habibollah Golparipour, a Kurdish political prisoner on death row. As they do every year, political leaders issued public Nowruz messages. In his new year speech, broadcast live on national television, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Iran would defend itself against any attack. "We do not have nuclear weapons, and we do not intend to produce them. But in the face of aggression, either by the US or the Zionist regime, we will attack them at the same level that they attack us," he told a crowd in the city of Mashhad, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency.