Another journalist and website editor arrested

Reporters Without Borders today deplored the arrest of Sina Motallebi, editor of the news website www.rooznegar.com and formerly a staff member of the banned reformist daily Hayat-é-No, and called for his immediate release. "This is the second journalist arrested this year for running a website," said the organisation's secretary-general Robert Ménard. "It comes as the UN Human Rights Commission is due to put out a report on Iran. Whatever the report says, the Iranian regime should know that sooner or later it will have to answer for all its arbitrary arrests of journalists," he warned, calling for the release of 9 other jailed journalists. Motallebi was arrested on 20 April after he answered a summons the previous day from the Adareh Amaken "morality" branch of the Teheran police which is considered close to the intelligence services. He was interrogated for several hours. After Hayat-é-No was shut down in January, he revived the Rooznegar.com website on which he had defended one of the paper's journalists, Alireza Eshragi, who was arrested on 11 January, and other imprisoned journalists. This angered the country's hardline judiciary but also some reformers, who he criticised for remaining silent about the arrests. He was accused of undermining national security through "cultural activity" and had been summoned several times in the past four months by legal officials and Adareh Amaken. In the last few days, Court 1410, known as the country's press court, has summoned journalists Masomeh Alinejad, of the daily Hambastegi, Mohamad Naimipur, editor of the daily Yasnoo, Reza Monsaref, editor of the fortnightly Avaimako, Mohammed Mirdamadi, managing editor of the reformist daily Nowrooz, Mohsen Sazgara, editor of a website and publisher of the banned daily Golestan-é-Iran, and the editor of the daily paper Tosseh.