TEHRAN The seventh trial session in the case of embattled Deputy Interior Minister Mostafa Tajzadeh was held here on Sunday. Additional new charges were brought against the deputy minister who is standing trial for electoral fraud and inciting dissent.

The trial, presided by Judge Mohammad Daqiqi, was held in public with Tajzadeh presenting his defense against charges the Interior Ministry which he heads usurped the authority of the Tehran Governor's Office.

Several copies of Tajzadeh's letter, containing the statement of State Inspectorate Organization head clearing Tajzadeh of involvement in electoral irregularities, were circulated during the session.

Tajzadeh, in his defense, described the February 2000 parliamentary elections as the "cleanest" in the country so far and dismissed accusations to the contrary.

According to the court announcement, the last trial for the deputy interior minister is to take place next Saturday.

According to another IRNA report, a woman journalist and a contender for the sixth parliamentary elections, Fariba Davoudi-Mohajer has been arrested and taken to an unknown place, press reports said on Sunday.

The Persian daily ***** Hambastegi ***** cited her husband Mohammad-Baqer Bakhtiar as saying that several men, carrying warrants from the Revolutionary Court, had beaten his wife before taking her to an unspecified place on Thursday.

"Upon screams of my children, I emerged from my room to see several armed men to arrest my wife," the paper quoted him as saying.

Bakhtiar said they had searched the house for seven hours and taken several documents, including books of a former prominent cleric Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Monatazeri and several pro-reform journalists as well as communiques of a student group, the Office for Consolidation of Unity, ***** Hambastegi ***** said.

He said Davoudi-Mohajer had contacted him twice since her arrest.

She was the head of the Public Relations Office of the banned ***** Khordad ***** daily, once managed by a jailed cleric, Abdollah Nouri.

Meanwhile, the press reported yesterday that Akbar Ganji, an investigative journalist currently in jail, has sent a complaint letter against the Head of the Special Court for the Clerics, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Eje'i over his recent statements.

In the letter to the Tehran Justice Department, Ganji has asked Eje'i to prove several accusations including dubbing the jailed journalist as "a source of corruption" and that Ganji was alluring or threatening his opponents.