Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2016

16 June 2016 - Conservative website closed, reformist editor prosecuted

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reiterates its condemnation of government harassment of print and online media outlets following the closure of a conservative news website and the start of judicial proceedings against the editor of a reformist newspaper.

 

The Committee for Press Authorization and Surveillance, the censorship wing of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, closed the conservative Jahannews website on 15 June under paragraph 11 of article 6 of the press code, which bans “spreading rumours and false information and misusing content written by others.” The committee did not say which content had caused offence.

 

The site often posts stories critical of the government. In recent months, it posted information about the visits to Iran by Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike in May, and revealed the content of a letter from European Union foreign affairs representative Federica Mogherini to the Iranian foreign minister about problems implementing the international agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme. It also revealed information about the dismissal of a member of the Rouhani administration. According to Iranian media reports, both the foreign ministry and the president’s office have filed complaints against Jahannews.

 

The reformist daily Ghanon was the victim of a complaint by the prison administration accusing it of publishing false information. On 14 June, the Tehran public prosecutor confirmed that Ghanon editor Mahnaz Mazaheri would be prosecuted over an 11 June article headlined “24 cursed hours” about the mistreatment and injuries that a detainee received in the course of a 24-hour period in a prison in the southern part of the capital.

 

Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor of the ultra-conservative daily Kayhan, was meanwhile questioned by the prosecutor’s office for culture and media on 15 June about complaints filed by various government bodies accusing it of publishing false and libellous information. A former interrogator at Tehran’s Evin prison, Shariatmadari was appointed as Kayhan’s editor by Supreme Guide Ali Khamenei in the early 1990s.

 

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15.06.2016 – Five Internet activists freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders is pleased to learn that five Internet activists who had been held for the past three years – Amir Gholestani, Fariborz Kardarfar, Masoud Ghasemkhani, Seyyed Masoud Seyyed Talebi and Amin (Faride) Akramipour – were granted conditional releases on 13 June.

Gholestani had been due to serve another 12 years in prison, Kardarfar another 10, Ghasemkhani another eight, and Talebi and Akramipour another four. All of them also have suspended sentence of five years prison. This means they will be under judicial control for the next five years and will have to report to a police station every month.

 

Revolutionary Guards arrested them and three others in September 2013 because of their activities on social networks, above all their Facebook posts about human rights abuses. After being placed in solitary confinement in Section 2A of Tehran’s Evin prison and subjected to a great deal of pressure, the eight defendants were sentenced to a combined total of 123 years in prison on 27 May 2014 on charges of anti-government propaganda, “insulting what is sacred” and “insulting the Supreme Leader of the Revolution.”

 

An appeal court reduced the sentences significantly in April 2015. Two of the other three activists, Naghmeh Shahi Savandi Shirazi and Mehdi Reyshahri, were released in 2014 and 2015 respectively. The third, Roya Saberi Negad Nobakht, is still held.

 

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14 June 2016 – Kabodvand paroled but Mazndarani back in his cell

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that imprisoned journalist Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand ended his hunger strike on 9 June after being acquitted of the new charges brought against him and welcomes the decision by the judicial authorities to grant him four days of medical parole, which began on 12 June.

 

RSF nonetheless points out that Kabodvand should have already been released under article 134 of the new Islamic penal code (as amended in 2013), which recommends that a defendant convicted on more than one criminal charge should serve only the longest sentence.

 

RSF continues to be concerned about the health of Ehssan Mazndarani, an imprisoned journalist who has been on hunger strike since 17 May. According to his family, he was taken back to Tehran’s Evin prison on 11 June although he is still refusing to eat and is suffering from pulmonary problems and anxiety attacks.

 

In a joint statement published on 11 June, 76 Iranian journalists called for the immediate release of these two journalists. “We are concerned about the crucial consequences that the hunger strike could have on the lives of these detained journalists and we condemn the violation of their legal and fundamental rights,” the statement said.

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07.06.2016 - Concern about two journalists on hunger strike in prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) continues to be concerned about the way the authorities in Tehran’s Evin prison are treating Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand and Ehssan Mazndarani, two journalists who are on hunger strike in protest against the conditions in which they are being held and the injustices to which they have been subjected.

 

Mazndarani has refused to eat since 17 May, according to his family, who were unable to locate him in the prison for several days after he had a heart attack on 21 May. It later turned out that, without telling the family, the prison authorities transferred him to a hospital, where doctors voiced concern about his condition. His family says he was also the victim of violence by a prison guard on the day he was hospitalized.

 

Kabodvand was hospitalized after he, too, had a heart attack on 25 May but was sent back to Evin prison a week later. Doctors say that his condition is critical and that the hunger strike could cost him his life.

 

As there no longer seems to be any limit to the persecution of media personnel in Iran, RSF calls on the authorities to give an immediate undertaking to guarantee the health of these two journalists. RSF also reminds Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, that he has a duty to intercede without delay and to demand official explanations from the authorities.

 

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23.05.2016 – Alarm over fate of two journalists in Evin prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is outraged by the lack of transparency and denial of justice surrounding the hospitalization of Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand, a journalist on hunger strike since 8 May in protest against his continuing detention and the judicial harassment to which he has been subjected in recent months

Kabodvand was taken to hospital on 21 May after collapsing in his cell in Tehran’s Evin prison but, after 24 hours of observation, he was returned to his cell. His family was able to visit him today but he was very weak and was unable to remain standing. He is continuing his hunger strike and his condition is very worrying.

 

Ehssan Mazndarani, another journalist held in Evin prison, has meanwhile disappeared within the prison, according to his wife, Malieh Hossieni.

She was told on 17 May that, on the orders of Revolutionary Court Judge Mohammad Moghiseh, he had been transferred back to Section 2A of Evin, a section controlled by the Revolutionary Guards.

But Evin prison officials denied this on 20 May without saying where he was. Arrested on 2 November 2015 along with three other journalists, Mazndarani was sentenced to seven years in prison on 26 April .

 

RSF urges Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, to intercede quickly and demand official explanations from the Iranian authorities.

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Iran is party, denying medical care constitutes a violation of the ban on torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

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12.05.2016 - Shargh’s former political editor released

Reporters Without Borders has learned that Keyvan Mehregan, a journalist who writes for reformist newspapers and used to be the daily Shargh’s political editor, was released yesterday after serving nine months of a one-year jail term. His wife said a judge granted his conditional release at a Tehran prosecutor’s request.

Mehregan was arrested when he went to the Tehran passport office to renew his passport on 26 August 2015. From there he was taken to Evin prison’s sentence enforcement office, where he was told that he had been sentenced to a year in prison and that he had to begin serving the sentence at once. He had been detained on several previous occasions since 2009.

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09.05.2016 - Two citizen-journalists freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes the decision taken on 4 May to grant a medical parole to citizen-journalist Hossien Ronaghi Malki in return for bail of 300 million toman (220,000 euros). Malki, who was arrested in December 2010 and is serving a 15-year jail sentence, has undergone several kidney operations and is in very poor health. He began a hunger strike more than a month ago.

According to his family, a forensic doctor said his medical problems were incompatible with further detention. The Tehran prosecutor’s office therefore obtained for him a suspension of sentence for one month on medical grounds.

RSF reminds the judicial authorities that Hossien should already have been released for good under article 134 of the new Islamic criminal code (as amended in 2013), according to which someone convicted of more than one crime serves only the main sentence.

 

RSF has also learned that citizen-journalist Atena Ferghdani was freed conditionally on 3 May following last month’s announcement by her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, that a Tehran appeal court had reduced her jail sentence from 12 years and nine months to 18 months. She continues to be sentenced to three years in prison on a separate charge of insulting the Supreme Leader but this sentence is now suspended and will expire in four years’ time .

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29.04.2016 - Well-known cartoonist freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) welcomes the release of Hadi Heidari, a well-known cartoonist who worked for the daily Shahrvand and ran the Persian Cartoon website. He was freed conditionally in Tehran on 27 April after completing half of a one-year jail sentence.

Plainclothesmen from the Tehran prosecutor’s office arrested him at Shahrvand on 16 November 2015 and took him to Evin prison, where he managed to inform his family that evening that he had been arrested to serve a prison sentence.

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26.04.2016 – Long jail terms for journalists arrested in November

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the heavy jail sentences that have been passed on three journalists who were the victims of a wave of arrests in November.

Afarine Chitsaz of the daily Iran, Ehssan Mazndarani, the editor of the daily Farhikhteghan, and Saman Safarzai of the monthly Andisher Poya were sentenced to ten, seven and five years in prison respectively, according to their lawyers, Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie and Iman Mirzazadeh.

A revolutionary court tried them on 7 March on charges of anti-government propaganda, conspiring against government officials and insulting government officials.

They and Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist who edited several reformist newspapers in the past, were arrested at their homes by Revolutionary Guard intelligence officers on 2 November. No sentence has been announced for Saharkhiz, who has been in a Tehran hospital since 10 March after going on hunger strike and suffering a heart attack.

Iran is still one of the world’s five biggest prisons for media personnel and is ranked 169rd out of 180 countriesin the 2016 Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

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25.04.2016 – Court reduces citizen-journalist’s 12-year sentence

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved to learn that an appeal court has reduced the sentence imposed on citizen-journalist and human rights defender Atena Ferghdani, and that she is now due to be freed next month. RSF nonetheless calls for her immediate release because she is the innocent victim of judicial persecution.

Her lawyer, Mohammad Moghimi, told journalists today that a Tehran appeal court had reduced her jail sentence from 12 years and nine months to 18 months, and that she should therefore be able to leave prison on 11 May.

“The appeal court acquitted her on the charge of plotting against the regime and ordered a four-year suspension of her sentence for insulting the Supreme Leader, while her sentence for insulting Iran’s President and the guards of Section A2 of Evin prison was commuted to a fine,” he said. The only sentence upheld by the court was the 18-month jail term for anti-government propaganda, he added.

Ferghdani was arrested on 11 January 2015 when she responded to a summons from a Tehran revolutionary court for posting a video on Facebook and YouTube the previous month. In the video she had described her experiences in Section 2A of Evin prison – a section controlled by Revolutionary Guards – after a previous arrest in August 2014.

 

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07.04.2016 - Two journalists freed

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is relieved by this week’s release of two
journalists – citizen-journalist Vahid Asghari
on 4 April and professional journalist Said Razavi Faghih on 6 April.

A young information technology student arrested on 11 May 2008 at Tehran’s main international airport,Asghari was sentenced to death twice by a
revolutionary court on charges of “publishing false information with the aim of stirring up public
opinion,” “activities threatening national security” and “hosting anti-Islamic
and counter-revolutionary websites and collaborating with foreign media.” After
an international outcry,

the death sentence was quashed and, on 6 December 2012, another revolutionary court gave him an 18-year jail sentence, which a Tehran appeal court reduced to 15 years two months later.

Asghari has various ailments including Carpal tunnel syndrome (compression of the median nerve in the hand and forearm). He spent seven months in solitary confinement and was mistreated and tortured. In
a letter to the presiding judge of one of the revolutionary courts on 17
October 2009, he gave a detailed description of the horrific interrogation
sessions to which he was subjected.

 

Faghih used to work for various newspapers including Yass-é
No, which the authorities closed in 2009. Arrested on 24 February 2014, he should have been released on completing a one-year sentence in March 2015 but he was given a new sentence of three and a half years in prison on charges of
anti-government publicity and insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Assembly of Experts.

He suffers from various renal and cardio-vascular ailments and underwent a heart operation in January 2015, following which he was returned to Rajaishah prison. He began a hunger strike on 27 March in protest against the way he was being treated and was released ten days later.

 

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29.03.2016 – Two journalists freed
pending trial

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that the journalist Hassan Shikhaghai was released on bail on 15 December, pending trial. The editor of Ruwange, a news website based in Mahabad, in the northwestern province of
Kurdistan, he was arrested on 7 October 2015 by plainclothesmen at
the Mahabad revolutionary court’s behest.

RSF has also been told that Farzad
Pourmoradi, a journalist based in the western province of
Kermanshah who works for the Kermanshah Post, has also been
released pending trial. He had to pay 90 million toman (70,000 euros)
in bail. Revolutionary Guard plainclothesmen raided his home and
arrested him on 2 November after he created a Kalaghnews page
on the Telegram social networking service. He is charged with
“activities against national security,” “anti-government
publicity” and insulting government officials. He suffered acute
cardiac and pancreatic problems while in prison.

 

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17.03.2016 - Sent into exile after four years in prison

 

Reporters Without Borders (RSF)
condemns the ruthless manner in which the judicial authorities are enforcing
the sentence imposed in 2013 on journalist and researcher Said Madani. Released on 15
March, after four years in prison,Madani has been ordered to travel at once to
the southern city of Bandar Abbas to begin a period of two years in exile
there.

A sociologist and writer (who haswritten
many articles for independent media outlets), Madani was freed under article
134 of the new Islamic criminal code (as amended in 2013), under which someone
convicted of more than one crime serves

only the main sentence.

After being arrested by
plainclothesmen at his Tehran home on 7 January 2012, Madani spent a year in isolation
in Section 209 of Tehran’s Evin prison. The decision to sentence him to a jail
term followed by exile was taken by a Tehran revolutionary court on 18 June
2013.

 

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18.02.2016 – Four Narenji website employees returned to prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns yesterday’s rearrest of four senior members of the Narenji (Orange) tech news website to begin serving long jail sentences that were confirmed on appeal. The four – Ali Asghar Honarmand, Hossien Nozari, Ehsan Paknejad and Abass Vahedi – are sentenced to eleven, seven, five and two and a half years in prison respectively.

Originally arrested along with seven colleagues in the southeastern city of Kerman on 3 December 2013, they were convicted by a Kerman court on 24 May 2014 on charges of “anti-government publicity,” “actions threatening national security” and “collaborating with TV stations based abroad.” Their seven colleagues received suspended sentences. All were freed in return for payment of large bail amounts. A court upheld the sentences on 30 November 2015 but the authorities did not notify them prior to the time of their rearrest.

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12.02.2016 - Former BBC journalist detained in Tehran

Reporters Without Borders condemns the detention of Bahman Darolshafai, a 34-year-old former BBC journalist with British and Iranian dual nationality. Arrested at his Tehran home by plainclothesmen on 3 February, he managed to make a short phone call to his mother five days later, telling her he was “in a cell in Evin prison and under interrogation.”

After several years in London, Darolshafa left the BBC’s Persian Service n 2014 and returned to Iran. Thereafter he was repeatedly interrogated by intelligence ministry officials and was forbidden to do any kind of journalistic activity. He had been translating literary and philosophical works.

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2.02.2016 - Four journalists held provisionally for past two months

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the continuing provisional detention of four journalists who were the victims of a wave of arrests exactly two months ago, on 2 November 2015 .

Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie, a lawyer representing two of the four, said: “There are differences between the investigation judge and the prosecutor as regards the charges against my clients.” He is defending Ehssan Mazndarani, the editor of the daily Farhikhteghan, and Issa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist.

As well as being accused of “propaganda activities against the government,” they are also charged with “acting against national security by means of meetings” and “conspiring against and insulting government officials.”

The case has been sent to the Tehran revolutionary court, whose president, Aboughasem Salevati, has been persecuting journalists and online information providers for years. He staged the “Stalin-style” mass trials in August 2009 and alone is responsible for convicting more than 100 journalists.

The other two journalists arrested on 2 November are Afarine Chitsaz of the daily Iran and Saman Safarzai of the monthly Andisher Poya. All four continue to be denied all their rights.

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14.01.2016 – Woman journalist detained for fourth time since 2009

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns journalist Rihaneh Tabtabai’s detention for the fourth time since 2009. Tabtabai, who has worked for Shargh,Etemad, Bahar and other reformist newspapers, was jailed on 12 January to serve a one-year sentence on charges of endangering national security and anti-government publicity.

Originally imposed by a revolutionary court in November 2014, the sentence was upheld by a Tehran appeal court two months ago. She is also sentenced to a two-year ban on political and journalistic activity in the media and online after she completes the jail term.

After being arrested on 12 December 2010, she was released on bail of 10 million toman (7,500 euros) on 16 January 2011. On 2 April 2012, she received a two-year jail sentence from a Tehran revolutionary court that was reduced to six months on appeal. She served the sentence from 21 June to 11 November 2014. She was also detained from 31 January to 26 February 2013, when she was freed on bail.

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12.01.2016 – Journalist sent back to prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Meisam Mohammadi’s

reimprisonment on 8 January. A onetime political editor of Kalameh Sabaz (a daily closed by the authorities in June 2009) and contributor to the Beheshti Foundation website, Mohammadi was arrested at his home by intelligence ministry officials on 10 February 2010 and was freed on bail two months later, pending trial. He was sentenced in May 2012 to four years in prison and a five-year ban on journalistic and political activities on charges of anti-government publicity and “meeting to conspire against national security.”

Kalameh Sabaz’s owner, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, the writer Zahra Rahnavard (who is Mousavi wife) and Mehdi Karoubi, a former parliamentary speaker and owner of the closed newspaper Etemad Melli, are still illegally held under house arrest and have been detained since 24 February 2011. Mousavi and Karoubi, who were both presidential candidates in 2009, have also been stripped of all of their rights. Their state of health is very worrying.