Amnesty- Iran must release journalists detained in newspaper office raids

HRANA News Agency– Amnesty International -Iran must release all journalists being held solely for carrying out their legitimate work, Amnesty International urged after at least 14 reporters were arrested in the past three days amid police raids on newspaper offices.

The journalists are reportedly accused of cooperating with "anti-revolutionary" Persian-language media organizations outside Iran.

"This latest example of locking-up Iran's journalists is a result of draconian restrictions on reporting which violate the right to freedom of expression and must be relaxed," said Ann Harrison, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme.

"All journalists who are imprisoned in Iran merely for peacefully doing their job should be released immediately and unconditionally."

The names of those arrested on Sunday and Monday are: Akbar Montajebi (Aseman Weekly), Emily Amraei (Bahar newspaper), Motahareh Shafie and Narges Joudaki (Arman newspaper), Pouria Alemi and Pejman Mousavi (Shargh newspaper), Sassan Aghaei, Javad Deliri and Nasrin Takhiri (Etemad newspaper), Saba Azarpeik, Keyvan Mehrgan, (Shargh), and Hossein Taghchi.

Milad Fadai Asl, the political editor of Iranian Labour News Agency and Soleyman Mohammadi, a reporter from the reformist Bahar newspaper, were reportedly arrested by security forces on Saturday night and taken to Tehran’s Evin prison.

Sassan Aghaei has been previously arrested a number of times, including in 2002 when he was arrested in connection with holding an illegal gathering marking the anniversary of 1999 student demonstrations which were brutally repressed by security forces. Milad Fadai Asl was arrested in December 2009 and sentenced to a one-year prison sentence after conviction of “spreading propaganda against the system”.

Shargh newspaper has been banned several times in the past, including for nearly three years between August 2007 and April 2010. It was banned again for three months in September 2012 after publishing a cartoon some officials deemed offensive to veterans of the Iran-Iraq war.