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| Iranian Imprisoned for Corruption Reports on Website |
| 2004-06-12 |
| From Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders called today for the immediate release of Abbas Kakavand, who was imprisoned on 7 June for allegedly disseminating "false news" in articles he wrote for the website gooya.com since February after leaving the conservative newspaper Ressalat. His articles criticised corruption and the political payments received by many conservative leaders. .... Charges were brought against Kakavand at a hearing of the Tehran criminal court on 7 June. The court ordered his immediate imprisonment when he was unable to pay bail of 100 million rials (about 11,600 euros). His articles criticising political corruption had appeared in both reformist dailies and on gooya.com, a very popular site which the authorities blocked along with other reformist sites for several days before the February legislative elections. He was first summoned by the judicial authorities on 3 April. On the day of his 7 June court hearing, gooya.com published an interview in which he accused most of the conservative political leaders and members of the overwhelmingly conservative parliament of "stealing from the tills of the Imam Khomeini foundation" to finance their electoral campaigns. Hadad Adel, the currently parliamentary speaker, was named. The Iranian regime censors thousands of websites considered to be "un-Islamic." It also harasses and jails online journalists. But the Internet is flourishing in Iran, online political debates are impassioned and weblogs are spreading fast. ... Now with a total of 13 journalists detained, Iran is the biggest prison for the press in the Middle East. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |