Renewed crackdown on foreign media

Reporters Without Borders condemns the government’s decision to expel Tehran-based journalist Ángeles Espinosa, the correspondent of the Spanish daily El País. The authorities cancelled her residence permit on 10 October and gave her two weeks to leave Iran, where she has been an accredited journalist for the past five years. No explanation was given. Espinosa’s press card was withdrawn when she was arrested in Qom in July after interviewing Ahmad Montazeri, the son of Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, a leading reformist cleric who died in December 2009. The Foreign Press Bureau told her at the time she would be able to recover it when she returned from her summer vacation. Instead, her passport was also confiscated last month, following her return from her vacation. When it was given back to her on 10 October, the residence permit stamp had been cancelled. The International Committee against Stoning has meanwhile reported that two German journalists were arrested on 10 October while interviewing the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, a woman whose death sentence by stoning for adultery was recently suspended. The son and Sakineh’s lawyer, Houtan Kian, were also reportedly arrested. The Iranian news agency INSA quoted prosecutor-general Golam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie as confirming the arrests of two foreigners who had “entered Iran as tourists.” Coming at a time of continued active repression of the Iranian media, this return to censorship of the foreign media is particularly disturbing, Reporters Without Borders said.