[WSIS CS-Plenary] Journalist and weblogger sentenced to 14 years in prison

[Hossein Amir]

Iran23 February 2005

Journalist and weblogger sentenced to 14 years in prison

Reporters Without Borders expressed outrage after journalist and weblogger 
Arash Sigarchi was sentenced to 14 years in prison on 22 February by a 
revolutionary tribunal in Gilan, northern Iran.

The worldwide press freedom organisation called on President Mohammad 
Khatami to intervene on behalf of 28-year-old Sigarchi, who has been in 
custody since his arrest on 17 January.

The organisation also called on the delegations of countries attending a 
preparatory meeting in Geneva ahead of the World Summit on the Information 
Society (WSIS) to contact their Iranian counterparts to demand Sigarchi's 
release.

"The authorities are trying to make an example of him. By handing down this 
harsh sentence against a weblogger, their aim is to dissuade journalists and 
Internet-users from expressing themselves online or contacting foreign 
media," it said.

"The Iranian president can no longer wash his hands of this by saying he is 
not responsible for the arrest, since Sigarchi was arrested by the 
intelligence ministry which in theory is answerable to the head of state.

"He should therefore intervene quickly to get this weblogger out of prison. 
Then it should be the duty of delegations attending the UN conference to 
publicly condemn this sentence. We call on them to show their courage by 
demonstrating that freedom of expression is at stake at the WSIS," the 
organisation said.

Sigarchi, who has been held since 17 January in Lakan Prison, Rashat, was 
sentenced for espionage and insulting the country's leaders but in reality 
he has been imprisoned for his work as a weblogger and journalist and 
contributing to American Radio Farda. The Iranian revolutionary tribunals 
are only supposed to rule on cases of high treason, espionage or 
counter-revolutionary activity. They should not be used to sentence 
journalists.

Since Iranian law does not allow a citizen to be sentenced for a political 
offence, opponents of the regime and journalists are routinely accused of 
being spies or enemies of the revolution.

Sigarchi, editor of the daily Gylan Emroz, has for the past three years runs 
a political and cultural blog, www.sigarchi.com/blog, on which he sometimes 
criticised the regime. The authorities had already blocked access to the 
site within the country.

He had previously been arrested, on 27 August 2004, and held for several 
days for posting an article online with photos of a demonstration in Tehran 
by families of prisoners executed in 1989. Since then he has suffered 
constant police harassment.

The weblogger had more recently condemned the harassment of journalists 
arrested in a series of "Internet File" cases (See : 
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3 ?id_article=12343), in particular the 
mistreatment suffered by his colleagues Shahram Rafihzadeh and Rozbeh Mir 
Ebrahimi.

The last message on his blog related to the Southeast Asian Tsunami, in 
which he expressed his solidarity with the victims and said that the Iranian 
people could not be unmoved by the tragedy.

Another weblogger, Mojtaba Saminejad, and a cyberjournalist, Mojtaba Lofti, 
also remain in prison (See : http://www.rsf.org/article.php3 
?id_article=12564).

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