Ezatollah Sahabi released from prison

Ezatollah Sahabi, former editor of the fortnightly magazine Iran-é-Farda (which was closed in April 2000) was freed on 2 March on two billion rials (289,400 euros) bail after 15 months in jail. The 75-year-old journalist had been arrested on 17 December 2000 and sentenced a month later (13 January) for four and a half years for uttering "propaganda against the regime" in a speech at Teheran's Amir-Kabir Technical University on 26 November 2000. His sentence was reduced to six months in December 2001. When they visited him in jail in February 2001, his family said they were "shocked" at his physical and mental state and said he did not even recognise them. Sahabi was hospitalised twice while in prison after having heart attacks. He had earlier been jailed on 26 June 2000 by the third division of the Teheran revolutionary court after taking part two months earlier in what was considered an "anti-Islamic" conference in Berlin. He was freed on bail on 21 August that year. Eighteen journalists are currently imprisoned in Iran. Taghi Rahmani, of Omid-é-Zangan, is still being held in solitary confinement and is banned from receiving visits from family and his lawyers. Another journalist, Reza Rais-Tussi, of Fath, was recently hospitalised for a skin disease and back pains, according to his wife, Farzaneh Rustayeh.