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| Reports: Iran Arrests Three Pro-Reform Journalists | ||
| 2015-11-04 | ||
| Iranian authorities have arrested three pro-reform journalists, one of whom has been critical recently of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, news agencies reported Tuesday. State television said the elite Revolutionary Guards had arrested "several members of an infiltration network linked to hostile Western governments who were working in the country's media and social networks." It did not give details, but said they would be published later. The ILNA news agency, which is close to Iran's reformists, had earlier reported the arrest of journalists Issa Saharkhiz and Ehsan Mazandarani, but did not say when they were detained or on what charges. Saharkhiz was released in 2013 after serving three years in prison for insulting Khamenei and publishing anti-regime propaganda. He was head of media at the culture ministry under reformist president Mohammad Khatami, who was in office from 1997 to 2005. In recent months, he had criticized Khamenei and other senior figures in interviews with foreign media. Mazandarani runs the reformist daily Farhikhtegan. He was previously arrested in 2009 for acting against national security and contact with foreigners, at a time of protests against the re-election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Separately, the Mehr news agency, close to moderate conservatives, announced the arrest of Afarine Chitsaz, a journalist with government newspaper Iran. Earlier Tuesday, state television reported the arrest of a Lebanese-American, Nezar Zaka, on suspicion of having links to the U.S. intelligence community.
[AnNahar] Iranian state television ... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe? on Tuesday claimed that a Washington-based Lebanese citizen missing in Tehran since September is actually an American spy now in the custody of authorities. However, facts are stubborn; statistics are more pliable... those who know Nizar Zakka -- who holds permanent-resident status in the United States -- said an image of him in army-style fatigues shown on Iranian state TV came from him recently taking part in a homecoming parade as an alumnus of his military high school in Georgia. The state TV report is the first official word in Iran about Zakka since his disappearance. It comes as four Americans are known to be held by Iranian authorities after the Islamic Theocratic Republicstruck a nuclear deal with world powers. Jim Benson, the president of Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, said state TV even identified the wrong man in the image as Zakka. "He's a good and decent man. There's nothing subversive about him," Benson told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named. "We're terribly worried about him and concerned about how his family is taking all of this." Zakka disappeared Sept. 18 while visiting Tehran for a state-sponsored conference, according to a statement from the Washington-based group IJMA3-USA, which advocates for Internet freedom across the Middle East. Zakka was last seen leaving his hotel in a taxi for the airport to fly to Beirut, but he never boarded his flight, according to a statement last week signed by Lebanese lawyer Antoine Abou Dib. Reached Tuesday by The News Agency that Dare Not be Named, Abou Dib said he had not heard of the Iranian claim and declined to immediately comment. IJMA3-USA did not immediately return a request for comment. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said officials were aware of Zakka's case. However, a person who gets all wrapped up in himself makes a mighty small package... "U.S. lawful permanent residents are not U.S. passport holders and would travel on the passport of their nationality," she said. "Consular assistance would be provided by the country of the individual's nationality." | ||
| Posted by:trailing wife |