Iran Cracking Down on Journalists “Remorselessly” - RWB

Reporters Without Border (RWB), the international NGO that advocates freedom of press, today warned that Iran is cracking down on journalists “remorselessly.” In the past two weeks alone, a journalist was arrested for the second time in a year and two women journalists whose journalist husbands are already in jail received jail sentences.

In its annual press freedom report released on 22 October, RWB had ranked Iran 175^th out of 178 countries. Some of the journalists arrested recently:

• Mohammad Reza Moghisseh, editor of Bist Saleha. He was arrested on 22 October for the second time in a year. In October 2009, he was arrested and spent 150 days in solitary confinement in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison.
• Jila Bani Yaghoob, a blogger and reporter, was sentenced to one year in prison on 22 October by Tehran revolutionary court and banned from journalism for 30 years. Her husband, Bahman Ahmadi Amoee, in detention since June 2009, has been given a five-year jail sentence. Amoee’s blog, We are Journalists, won “Best of the Blogs” prize given by Deutsche Welle last April.
• Mahssa Amrabadi, another women journalist, was sentenced to a year in prison by Tehran revolutionary court on 14 October. Her husband, Masoud Bastani, has been in prison since July 2009. He was arrested and tried along many other journalists in the Stalinist-style mass trials of August 2009.

For viewing today’s RWB report, visit here.