LONDON: The Committee to Protect Journalists has urged the Iranian authorities to free a journalist who was seized at an International Women’s Day parade.
Amir-Abbas Azarmvand, a financial reporter for state-run economic newspaper SMT, had been arrested in September 2021 for allegedly “colluding against national security” and “spreading propaganda against the system,” according to HRANA (Human Rights Activists News Agency) and CPJ’s reporting from the time; he was released on bail on Sept. 23.
He was sentenced to four years and four months behind bars in January this year but was not summoned to jail, CPJ said, until suddenly being detained on Tuesday. He has now been sent to Evin Prison to begin the sentence.
“Iranian authorities must immediately release journalist Amir-Abbas Azarmvand and ensure that he does not face any further charges over his work,” Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the CPJ, said.
“It is bad enough that Iran sentences journalists to years in prison over their reporting – it is even worse when those sentences hang over a journalist’s head, to be enforced whenever authorities want to retaliate,” Mansour said.
CPJ said: “Iranian authorities must release journalist Amir-Abbas Azarmvand from prison immediately and should cease jailing members of the press for their work.”
Tehran has a long history of abusing journalists and other citizens who report on the regime and its activities — even for state media.
On its website, CPJ lists the newspapers shut down and the journalists jailed by the Islamic Republic as it seeks to exert control over the public sphere and discourse within it.
