AIJA AND RSF DENOUNCES LATEST ARREST OF JOURNALISTS IN IRAN


PARIS 4 Mar. (IPS) As more journalists had been detained in Iran by the Islamic Judiciary, the Rome-based Association of Iranian Journalists Abroad joined the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters Without Borders) in denouncing the recent arrested.

Five journalists have been arrested in less than a week at the very time that a delegation from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights was investigating arbitrary arrests.

Kambiz Kaheh and Said Mostaqasi, film magazine journalists, were arrested on 26 February; Mohammad Abdi, chief editor of the monthly Honar Haftom, and Amir Ezati, of Mahnameh Film, on 28 February; and Ms. Yasamin Soufi, a film music critic, on first of March.

In a fax to Ayatollah Ali Khamen eh’, the unpopular and lamed leader of the Islamic Republic, the AIJA called on him to “immediately” order the Judiciary he directly control to free “not only the journalists arrested in the altest wave of crackdown on dissidents, but all political prisoners as well, without condition”.

“At a time when a delegation from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, led by French Jurist Louis Joinet, has just finished an investigative tour of Iran, these arrests appear as an insult to this body”, said Robert Ménard, secretary-general of Reporters Without Borders.

The organisation has asked the head of Iran's judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Shahroudi, to immediately release these five journalists and eight others, including Alireza Eshraqi, a journalist imprisoned since the beginning of the year.

At a press conference held at the end of his tour, Mr. Joinet voiced his concern about the freedom of expression in Iran and stated that “solitary confinement”, which is imposed “on a large scale and for very long periods can be considered a prison in prison, which comprises very serious risks of arbitrariness”.

On 26 February, Kambiz Kaheh, a journalist at the film magazines, Cinema-Jahan, Majaleh Film, Donye Tassvir, and Cinema-ye-No, and Sa’id Mostaqasi, a journalist at Haftehnameh Cinema, were arrested at their homes by unidentified plainclothes men, their rsidences have been searched, and transferred to an unknown place.

On 28 February, Mohammad Abdi, chief editor of the monthly Honar Haftom, and Amir Ezati, of Mahnameh Film, were arrested in the same conditions. On 1 March, Yasamin Soufi, a film music critic, went to a summons by Edareh Amaken (a section of the Teheran police usually tasked with “moral” type crimes and considered close to the intelligence services controlled by the office of the leader), and was then transferred to an unknown place.

The journalist Mohamed Mohsen Sazegara, arrested on 18 February, was for his part released on 22 February following a hunger strike. This arrest occurred a few days after his website www.alliran.net carried an article in which he criticised Ayatollah Khameneh’i.

With Mr. Qasem Sho’leh Sa’di, a lawyer and university professor, also an outspoken critic of both the leader and the President, Mr. Sazegara has formed a new political movement named National Coalition of Iranians for Freedom.

Mr. Sho’leh Sa’di was arrested last Monday at Tehran Mehrabad Airport on his return from Paris and transferred to Evin Prison.

Since 12 January 2002, Alireza Eshraqi, a journalist at Hayat-é-No, has been held at Evine prison, accused of having insulting Grand Ayatollah Roohollah Khomeini after the paper, which is owned and edited by Hojjatoleslam hadi Khameneh'i, the younger brother of the Ayatollah, carried a cartoon, published some sixty years ago by an American newspaper, showing the American Chief Justice being crushed by the finger of the then President of the United States.

The journalist's mother, Mrs. Mehri Zayanderodi Zadeh, is very worried and sent a letter on 17 January to President Khatami in which she insisted on the fact that the journalist has lost a lot of weight and is suicidal.

During the week of 26 February, a hundred or so journalists sent a letter to the Iranian leaders calling for his release and that of his colleagues.

Their homes have been searched.

In the past two years, the Iranian Judiciary, acting on orders from Mr. Khameneh'i, has shut about a hundred of publications and jailed a dozen of prominent journalists, the great majority of them supporting reforms and changes in Iran.

As a result, the RSF has “awarded” the Iranian leader as the “greatest and most dangerous predator of freedom of the press”. ENDS MORE JOURNALISTS ARRESTED 4303