(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Shahroudi, RSF protested the banning of the daily “Ahrar”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, requested that “the ban on this newspaper as well as the ban on thirty other publications be cancelled.” RSF recalled that the Teheran court recently refused 132 publications authorisations, some of […]
(RSF/IFEX) – In a letter to Head of the Judiciary Ayatollah Shahroudi, RSF protested the banning of the daily “Ahrar”. Robert Ménard, RSF’s secretary-general, requested that “the ban on this newspaper as well as the ban on thirty other publications be cancelled.” RSF recalled that the Teheran court recently refused 132 publications authorisations, some of which were submitted by high-ranking members of the regime. Nine journalists are currently imprisoned in Iran. Two of them, Hassan Youssefi Echkevari, a journalist with “Adineh” (see IFEX alert of 29 November 2000), and Khalil Rostamkhani, a journalist with “Daily News” and “Iran Echo” who was released on bail on 15 November 2000 (see IFEX alerts of 19 and 14 November, 17 and 11 October, 7 and 1 Septemeber, 8 August, 29 June, 1 May, 28 and 25 April 2000), are liable for the death penalty.
According to information collected by RSF, on 9 December a local court ordered the three-month suspension of “Ahrar”, which is published in Tabriz, capital of the province of East-Azerbaijan. The Tabriz court also sentenced Mohammed-Hossein Kouzé-Gar, the newspaper’s editor, to a fine of 55 million rials (about US$31,427) for “spreading false news”. The newspaper was sued by the military police of East-Azerbaijan.
