Tehran, 10 Feb. (AKI) - An Iranian diplomat has targeted Italian daily newspaper La Stampa for reprisals for having republished several of the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which have provoked outrage and violence across the Muslim world. "We must prevent the entry of journalists of La Stampa, owned by the FIAT car group, property of Zionists" said Mohammad Hassan Ghadidi Abyaneh, former Iranian ambassador in Australia. Islamists in Iran frequently criticise FIAT, and there is a widely circulated theory that company heir, Edoardo Agnelli, who took his life in January 2003, was victim of a murder plot because he had converted to Islam .
The Turin-based daily is guilty not only of publishing the offending cartoons, according to the diplomat, but of "being a mouthpiece for that Zionism which, to gain control of FIAT killed Edoardo Agnelli." Agnelli plunged to his death from a motoroway over bridge in January 2000.
La Stampa is not the only foreign daily in the sights of the new hardline government. Culture minister Mohammad Hossein Saffar Harandi, have announced new measures against foreign mendia and journalists who "denigrate the Islamic Republic and offend its leaders". |