Iranian authorities temporarily shut down the newspaper of Mehdi Karoubi, a leading reformist and opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Karoubi's party said in a post on its website Monday. Etemad-e Melli was shut down late on Sunday on the orders of the Tehran prosecutor's office, the website said. The party's name is also Etemad-e Melli (National Trust.) The newspaper was not published on Monday.Karoubi's son, Hossein, was quoted as saying, "Last night a representative of the prosecutor's office came to the Etemad-e Melli printing house and announced the temporary shutdown of the daily." There was no immediate comment from the judiciary.
The ISNA news agency said the daily was closed because it planned to publish a statement on its frontpage on Monday. It said Karoubi planned to respond to "insults" against him by his hardline opponents and say he would not be not silenced.
Tehran prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi told the semi-official Mehr news agency that the paper was not banned but did not hit the newsstands because of "technical problems." "The reason for the paper not being published is due to problems at the printing house and the paper was not banned," Mortazavi said.
However, Esmail Gherami Moghaddam, spokesman for Karoubi's political party, also called Etemad-e-Melli, insisted that the paper had been banned. "Since the prosecution said it is a temporary ban we hope that we will be able to see the paper go to print tomorrow," he was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency.