Intelligence services hold Afghan journalist incommunicado in Qom

Afghan journalist Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of the monthly Haqoq-e-Zan (“Women's Rights), has been held incommunicado in Qom for the past week, Reporters Without Borders said today. Nasab has lived for several years in Qom, which is 150 km southwest of Tehran. “Nasab's arbitrary detention is yet further evidence of the government's inability to tolerate the press,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Local journalists are subject to constant harassment and intimidation, against which they are powerless. Foreign journalists in Iran are hardly any better off.” Nasab was arrested at his home in Qom on 4 March by intelligence ministry officials, who carried out a search and took away his computer's disk drive and personal documents. It is not known where he is currently being held. When Reporters Without Borders reached Rahimullah Samander, the president of the Kabul-based Afghan Independent Journalists Association (AIJA), he called for Nasab's immediate release. He said the AIJA also urged the authorities to allow Nasab to receive visits from his family and his lawyer. Nasab spent more than 80 days in prison in the Afghan capital of Kabul in 2005 after being convicted of blasphemy by writing articles criticising the severity of Koranic law. Two Iranian journalists have meanwhile received prison sentences since the start of the month. Bahaman Ahamadi Amoee of the daily Sarmayeh was given a six-month sentence and Parnaz Azima of the US radio station Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty got a one-year sentence. The Press Surveillance and Authorisation Commission suspended Asar Panjshanbeh, a monthly has been published for the past nine years, on 7 February. Click here to read the chapter on Iran in this year's annual report on press freedom worldwide, which Reporters Without Borders issued on 13 February.