(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed outrage over the 14 year sentence handed down on 22 February 2005 to journalist and weblogger Arash Sigarchi by a revolutionary tribunal in Gilan, northern Iran. The organisation called on President Mohammad Khatami to intervene on behalf of the 28-year-old blogger, who has been in custody since his arrest on […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has expressed outrage over the 14 year sentence handed down on 22 February 2005 to journalist and weblogger Arash Sigarchi by a revolutionary tribunal in Gilan, northern Iran.
The organisation called on President Mohammad Khatami to intervene on behalf of the 28-year-old blogger, who has been in custody since his arrest on 17 January.
RSF also called on the delegations of countries attending a preparatory meeting in Geneva ahead of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to contact their Iranian counterparts to demand Sigarchi’s release.
“The authorities are trying to make an example of him. By handing down this harsh sentence to a weblogger, their aim is to dissuade journalists and Internet-users from expressing themselves online or contacting foreign media,” the organisation said.
“The Iranian president can no longer wash his hands of this by saying he is not responsible for the arrest, since Sigarchi was arrested by the Intelligence Ministry, which in theory is answerable to the head of state.”
“He should therefore intervene quickly to get this weblogger released from prison. It is then the duty of delegations attending the UN conference to publicly condemn this sentence. We call on them to show their courage by demonstrating that freedom of expression is a key issue for WSIS,” the organisation said.
Sigarchi, who has been held since 17 January in Lakan Prison, Rashat, was sentenced for espionage and insulting the country’s leaders. But in reality he has been imprisoned for his work as a weblogger and journalist and for contributing to American Radio Farda, according to RSF.
Iranian revolutionary tribunals are only intended to rule on cases involving high treason, espionage or counter-revolutionary activities. They should not be used to sentence journalists. Since Iranian law does not allow a citizen to be sentenced for a political offence, opponents of the regime and journalists are routinely accused of being “spies” or “enemies of the revolution”.
Sigarchi, editor-in-chief of the daily “Gylan Emroz”, has for the past three years maintained a political and cultural blog, http://www.sigarchi.com/blog, on which he occasionally criticised the regime. The authorities had already blocked access to the site within the country.
Sigarchi was arrested once before, on 27 August 2004, and held for several days after posting an article online with photos of a demonstration held by families of prisoners executed in 1989 in Tehran (see IFEX alert of 8 October 2004). Since then he has suffered constant police harassment.
More recently, the weblogger had condemned the harassment and arrest of journalists in a series of “Internet File” cases (See: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12343), in particular the mistreatment suffered by his colleagues Shahram Rafihzadeh and Rozbeh Mir Ebrahimi. The last message on his blog was about the Southeast Asian Tsunami. In the message, he expressed his solidarity with the victims and said that the Iranian people could not be unmoved by the tragedy.
Another weblogger, Mojtaba Saminejad, and a cyberjournalist, Mojtaba Lotfi, remain in prison (See: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=12564).
