TWO MORE NEWSPAPERS SHUT IN IRAN BY THE JUDICIARY
TEHRAN 4 May. (IPS)
The Iranian Judiciary ordered Saturday the closure of two more newspapers, exactly one day after the Head of the power, the Iraqi-born Ayatollah Mahmood Hashemi-Shahroodi had criticised openly the shortcomings of the Iranian Islam-based justice.The dailies "Bonyan" and "Iran" were imposed temporary ban on orders from the Justice Department of Tehran P
rovince, accused of "insulting to Islam’s sanctities, including the prophet Mohammad.According to Mr. Abdol Rasool Vesal, Iran’s
Managing Editor, the daily is facing some 96 complaints. The paper drew sharp criticism from religious authorities last Friday when seminary students in the southern city of Qom staged an angry demonstration for a recent article they deemed as an insult to prophet Mohammad and called for the closure of the paper, the arrest of Mr. Vesal as well as IRNA Managing Director Abdollah Nasseri Taheri.The Persian daily Iran, whose license holder is the Islamic Republic News Agency
IRNA, began publication in early 1995."
Bonyan" was banned also on an order from Tehran Province Justice Department, judicial sources said, explaining the closure on complaints from Mr. Ali Ansari, the managing director of a weekly of the same name, who has argued that the daily "Bonyan" have copied the weekly's distinctive marks and brand name.In an address to some judges on Friday, Mr. Hashemi-Shahroodi criticised the "appalling situation" of Iran’s prisons and said that the Iranian Justice and Judiciary were based on a "wrong foundation" ever since the creation of the Islamic Republic and do not match modern times nor Islamic canons standards of justice.
Mr. Hashemi-Shahroodi, who was the official spokesman for the Tehran-based Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution of Iraq before being appointed by Ayatollah Ali Khameneh'i as the Head of the Islamic Republic’s Judiciary system, acknowledged that there were between 800.000 to more than one million prisoners in the Islamic Republic, with only 170.000 of them being tried, the rest waiting for their trial, some of them more than a decade.
However, he did not said how many of the over a million prisoners were political dissidents.
Protesting the closure of "Bonyan" and "Iran", Mr. Masha’allah Shamsolva’ezin, the spokesman of Iran's Society for the Defence of Press Freedom (ISDPF), said since the bundle closure of Iranian pro reform publications, ordered two years ago by Ayatollah Khameneh'i, the number of the titles shut in Iran had reached 84.
The veteran editor of four banned newspapers, namely "Jame’eh", "Toos", "Neshat" and "Asr Azadegan" added that the ISDPF considers as "illegal" the closure of "Iran" and "Bonyan" and urged the Judiciary to "fully respect" the press freedom act.
"Though we are fully aware that the Judiciary takes its decision free of Iran’s national interests by harming the national and independent press, yet we consider that the continuation of the ban imposed on the press harms Iran’s higher interests", Mr. Shamsolva’ezin told the Persian service of Radio France Internationale on Saturday.
In another interview with the Persian service of the Prague-based Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, the veteran journalist said newspaper readership in Iran has fallen sharply in the past year because the public considers present newspapers heavily controlled.
"Journalists, fearful of arrest and prosecution, resort to self-censorship", he noted.
Reformist journalist Ahmad Zeydabadi, sentenced three days ago to 23 months in jail and banned from journalism for five years, told the same radio station that the fall in newspaper readership reflects the public's disappointment in the reform movement.
Meanwhile, dissident journalist and writer Siamak Pourzand was sentenced to eight years in prison for "anti-revolutionary activities against state security and collaboration with monarchist groups, including Prince Reza Pahlavi", the pro-government "Iran" newspaper reported in its last issue Saturday.
Mr. Pourzand, 70, was abducted some months ago on the doorsteps of her sister’s house in Tehran by unidentified plainclothes security agents and was held in an undisclosed prison, before the same newspaper reported suddenly that he had been tried by a court situated at the capital’s international airport Mehrabad.
According to "Iran", Mr. Pourzand had "confessed" to all charges, including working with Prince Reza Pahlavi and foreign intelligence organisations, that had paid him 4 billions rpt four billions US Dollars to be distributed among Iranian dissident journalists in Iran.
But informed sources said Mr. Pourzand was arrested because of his coverage for Iranian foreign-based media, mostly radio and television stations based in Los Angeles, of Iranian events, particularly the anti-regime, anti-leader riots and demonstrations by young soccer fans after football games.
The demonstrations, coupled with provocative interviews by Prince Pahlavi, had shaken the Iranian clerical rulers, who banned television satellite dishes and antennas.
In a recent telephone conversation with one of his daughters, Mr. Pourzand said to do nothing to save him, adding: "consider me as being a dead man".
According to "Iran", the court found Mr. Pourzand guilty of threatening "national security and collaborating with the SAVAK", the late ousted shah's political police, and sentenced him to eight years prison term, taking into account the journalist's age.
Mr. Pourzand is married to Mehrangiz Kaar, a lawyer and human rights activist and legal scholar whose critical writings have challenged clerical orthodoxy.
Mrs. Kaar, who is currently living in the United States undergoing medical treatment, was arrested and imprisoned for one month for having participated in a conference in Berlin two years ago, considered "anti-Islamic" by the authorities. ENDS TWO MORE PAPERS BANNED 4502