{"id":1121,"date":"2017-09-13T14:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T14:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1121"},"modified":"2017-09-13T15:10:09","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T15:10:09","slug":"iran-free-unjustly-held-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/?p=1121","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Free Unjustly Held Journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sasan Aghaei, July 2017. \u00a9 Private<\/p><\/div>\n

No Let-up in Authorities\u2019 Targeting of Media<\/strong><\/p>\n

HRW- September 13, 2017 – (Beirut) \u2013 Two\u00a0Iranian\u00a0journalists arrested in Tehran in August 2017 remain detained without formal charges, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should immediately release them or charge them with recognizable criminal offenses and ensure them fair trials.<\/p>\n

Authorities from the Judiciary Intelligence Agency arrested Sasan Aghaei, 34, deputy editor of the reformist daily\u00a0Etemad<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0at his office in Tehran on August 13. On August 22, authorities also arrested Yaghma Fashkhami, a journalist for the\u00a0Didban Iran<\/em>website, at his office in Tehran. Both had been arbitrarily detained previously, in violation of their rights to freedom of speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cIran\u2019s judiciary and intelligence agencies have a longstanding pattern of prosecuting journalists on dubious national security charges,\u201d said\u00a0Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cThe latest journalists to be arrested have not been accused of doing anything beyond exercising their right to free speech, and should be freed immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since his arrest \u2013 the fourth time since 2009 \u2013 Aghaei has been held in solitary confinement in ward 241 of Evin prison in Tehran, which is under the supervision of the Judiciary Intelligence Agency. A source close to the Aghaei family, who wished to remain anonymous, told Human Rights Watch that \u201cauthorities are pressuring Aghaei to confess to having ties with the\u00a0Amad News website,\u201d which Iranian authorities consider an opposition outlet. \u201cThey could have simply summoned him instead of showing up to arrest him as a criminal,\u201d the source said. Indefinite solitary confinement is cruel and inhuman treatment and can amount to torture, Human Rights Watch said.<\/p>\n

On September 11, a source close to the Fashkhami family told Human Rights Watch that the authorities who first detained Fashkhami for five days later extended the detention to one month. \u201cThe family has been going to the court every day, but still do not know what charges he is facing,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n

On August 31, Azam Eghtesad, the mother of Ehsan Mazandarani, a reformist journalist who has been detained in Evin prison since March 11, told the Center for Human Rights in Iran that her son\u2019s health had deteriorated in prison. Authorities released Mazandarani from Evin prison on February 11 after he served a year on charges of \u201cassembly and collusion against national security\u201d and \u201cpropaganda against the state,\u201d but\u00a0arrested him again a month later<\/a>. Authorities told Mazandarani that his release had been \u201ca mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

On August 29, authorities released Hengameh Shahidi and Zeinab Karmianian, two journalists the Intelligence Ministry arrested in March. It is not clear whether the authorities brought any charges against the two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No Let-up in Authorities\u2019 Targeting of Media HRW- September 13, 2017 – (Beirut) \u2013 Two\u00a0Iranian\u00a0journalists arrested in Tehran in August 2017 remain detained without formal charges, Human Rights Watch said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[356,357],"class_list":["post-1121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","tag-sasan-aghaei","tag-yaghma-fashkhami"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1121"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1121\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iransos.com\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}