About 2,000 Iranian writers and their secularist supporters gathered yesterday to bury the murdered poet, Mohammad Mokhtari, amid word of several arrests in a string of mystery murders that has rattled the Islamic republic.
The crowd of mourners at Tehran's al-Nabi mosque, a number of whom had been in hiding in recent days, carried the body of Mokhtari to a waiting hearse in almost complete silence, punctuated by calls of "There is no God but God".
Writer Mahmoud Dolatabadi appealed for calm, warning the crowd against turning the funeral into a political rally that could be "misinterpreted" in the current tense atmosphere.
But many seemed sceptical that the announcement of several arrests late on Monday would end the killings that have claimed at least three dissident writers and two opposition activists.
"They have started with the [secularist] dissidents who do not pose any threat to the system and are not a possible alternative in political terms," said one writer.
"But they will move on to the Islamic intellectuals who have been seriously criticising the legitimacy of the system," said the writer, who asked not to be identified.
Reflecting the general level of fear in society, moderate newspapers speculated on the next targets, including some of the country's top Islamic dissident intellectuals and opposition journalists.
Hardline dailies warned of Zionist and CIA plots.