Votes by the roadside, a possible assassination and impossible turnout raises questions in Iran

The results have been condemned as a fraud by opposition leaders and by the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators against the result, many of whom bear signs saying "Where is my vote?"

According to the official results Mr Ahmadinejad won the contest in all but two of the thirty voting areas of Iran.

Only in Azerberbaijan, West and in Sistan and Baluchistan did Mr Mousavi officially win but even in these areas Mr Ahmadinejad claimed a massive increase in the number of votes from the 2005 election when he first came to power.

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In the capital Tehran, votes for Mr Ahmadinejad, who used to the city's mayor, increased by over 100 per cent and his share of the vote in the city increased from around 30 per cent to more than 50 per cent.

The size of Mr Ahmadinejad's victory has provoked massive suspicion that the results were rigged to secure a second term for the man known internationally for his tirades against the US and Israel.

In some towns the official turnout was reported actually higher than the number of registered voters, reaching as much 140 per cent in some places.

In another report 1,000 ballot papers were found lying on a roadside. The papers had been neatly folded suggesting they had been cast in the normal way but had later been thrown away. A picture of one of the papers posted on the Balatarin website shows a vote cast for one of the losing candidates.

Fears that the vote was rigged took an even more sinister turn when it was reported that an employee of the Iranian interior ministry was killed in a suspicious car accident after he leaked the "real" election results showing that Mr Mousavi won and that Mr Ahmadinejad came third.