Akbar Ganji begins fourth year in prison

Journalist Akbar Ganji will start his fourth year in prison on 22 April, despite repeated calls by Reporters Without Borders for his unconditional release since he was jailed for alleged subversion in 2000. Another journalist, Ahmad Zeid-Abadi, was recently returned to prison to serve the rest of his sentence. "Ganji's only 'crime' was to do his job as an investigative reporter and Zeid-Abadi is also paying dearly for criticising the regime," said Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard. "We demand the release of both of them as well as eight others in prison." Ganji, who worked on the daily paper Sobh-é-Emrooz, was arrested on 22 April 2000 after appearing before the press court accused of writing that leading figures, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian, had been involved in the murder of opponents and intellectuals in late 1998. He was also accused of taking part in a conference in Berlin on 7-8 April 2000 about reform in Iran which the government charged was "anti-Islamic." He was sentenced on 13 January 2001 to 10 years in prison but the appeal court reduced this to six months on 15 May. However on 15 July, the supreme court quashed the May sentence on technical grounds and imposed a six-year jail sentence. He has been in solitary confinement for the past 70 days and, unlike other political prisoners, is not allowed to phone his wife, who says prison doctors have advised that he be hospitalised outside the prison to treat his back problems. Officials have refused to allow this. Zeid-Abadi, of the reformist daily Hamshahri and the monthly Iran-é-Farda, was ordered by legal officials to report to Teheran's Evin prison on 13 April after being sentenced on appeal on 10 March to 13 months in jail (eight for "anti-regime propaganda" and five for "putting out false news") and a five-year ban on "public and social activity," including journalism. He had been sentenced by the press court on 17 April 2002 to 23 months in prison and a five-year ban on "public and social activity" for "making propaganda against the Islamic regime and its institutions." The court accused him of making "provocative speeches that threatened national security." He has already served seven months and six more remain. Journalists Hossein Ghazian (arrested last October) and Abbas Abdi (arrested in November) were each sentenced on appeal early this month to four years and six months in prison - four years for "passing information to enemy countries," and six months for "making propaganda against the Islamic regime." Ghazian, a director of the Ayandeh public opinion firm and a journalist on the daily paper Nowrooz, and Abdi, another Ayandeh director, former editor of the daily Salam and former staff member of many reformist papers, were accused of "receiving money from the US polling firm Gallup or from a foreign embassy." They were arrested after the official news agency IRNA, published last 22 September an Ayandeh poll that showed 74.4 per cent of Iranians favoured a resumption of ties with the United States.