(RSF/IFEX) – 22 April 2003 will have marked the three-year anniversary of journalist Akbar Ganji’s imprisonment. The journalist is beginning his fourth year in prison despite repeated calls by RSF for his unconditional release since he was jailed for alleged “subversion” in 2000. Another journalist, Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, recently returned to prison to serve the remainder […]
(RSF/IFEX) – 22 April 2003 will have marked the three-year anniversary of journalist Akbar Ganji’s imprisonment. The journalist is beginning his fourth year in prison despite repeated calls by RSF for his unconditional release since he was jailed for alleged “subversion” in 2000. Another
journalist, Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, recently returned to prison to serve the remainder of his sentence.
“Ganji’s only ‘crime’ was to do his job as an investigative reporter, and Zeid-Abadi is also paying dearly for having criticised the regime,” said RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard. “We demand the release of both journalists as well as the eight others who remain in prison.”
Ganji, who worked for the daily newspaper “Sobh-é-Emrooz”, was arrested on 22 April 2000 after appearing before the Press Court, accused of writing that leading figures, including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani and former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, were involved in the murders of opposition figures and intellectuals in late 1998. He was also accused of taking part in a conference in Berlin on 7 and 8 April 2000 about reform in Iran, which the government charged was “anti-Islamic”.
On 13 January 2001, Ganji was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment, but on 15 May the Appeals Court reduced the sentence to six months’ imprisonment. However on 15 July, the Supreme Court quashed the May sentence on technical grounds and imposed a six-year sentence.
Ganji has spent the past 70 days in solitary confinement. Unlike other political prisoners, he is not allowed to phone his wife, who says prison doctors have recommended he be hospitalised outside the prison for treatment of his back problems. Officials have dismissed the request.
Legal officials ordered Zeid-Abadi, of the reformist daily “Hamshahri” and the monthly “Iran-é-Farda”, to report to Tehran’s Evin prison on 13 April. On 10 March, he was sentenced on appeal to 13 months in jail (eight months for “anti-regime propaganda” and five more for “distributing false news”), and was also served a five-year ban on “public and social activity”, including journalism.
On 17 April 2002, the Press Court sentenced Zeid-Abadi to 23 months imprisonment and a five-year ban on “public and social activity” for “making propaganda against the Islamic regime and its institutions”. The court also accused him of making “provocative speeches that threatened national security.” He has already served seven months of his sentence and must serve six more.
In early April, journalists Hossein Ghazian and Abbas Abdi were each sentenced on appeal to four years and six months in prison. They got four years for “passing information to enemy countries” and six more for “making propaganda against the Islamic regime”. Ghazian and Abdi were arrested in October and November 2002, respectively.
Ghazian, a director of the Ayandeh public opinion firm and a journalist from the daily newspaper “Nowrooz”, and Abdi, another Ayandeh director, a former editor of the daily “Salam” and a former staff member of many reformist papers, were each accused of “receiving money from the American polling firm Gallup or from a foreign embassy”. They were arrested after the official news agency IRNA published an Ayandeh poll on 22 September indicating that “74.4 per cent of Iranians favoured a resumption of ties with the United States”.