Arash Sigarchi is a blogger and journalist in Iran. Sigarchi was arrested on January 17 and has been denied the right to see a lawyer and bail has been set at 200 million rials (about $25,000 U.S.). The authorities have put pressure on his mother to deny that her son has been arrested.
His blog, Panhjareh Eltehab (The Window of Anxiety), had been banned by authorities in Iran for speaking out against recent arrests of cyberjournalists and bloggers and is inaccessible within the country. In addition to his blog, he is the editor of the daily Gylan Emroz. A few days before his arrest he was interviewed by two foreign radio stations, the BBC World Service and Radio Farda.
On August 27 of last year he was imprisoned for several days for an article, illustrated with photographs, of a rally in Tehran by families of prisoners who were executed in 1989.
Motjaba Saminejad, an Iranian blogger who was freed on bail of 500 million rials (43,000 euros) at the end of January, was reimprisoned on 12 February when a judge doubled the bail, making it impossible for him to raise the money.
Saminejad was told his bail had been raised to 1 billion rials when he was summoned by the Tehran prosecutor's office for a hearing on February 12.
He was first arrested in November 2004 for reporting the arrests of three fellow bloggers in his former blog. While detained, his blog address was transferred to the blog of a group of hackers linked to the Iranian radical Islamist movement Hezbollah, which may have the reason for his re-arrest. After his release, he relaunched his blog using a new address.
At the start of January, Tehran's prosecutor-general, Said Mortazavi, ordered Internet Service Providers to block the main weblogs - Orkut, Nedstat, Blogspot, Persianblog, Blogrolling and others. Iranian Internet-users are now almost entirely cut off from the blogsphere.
What should you do? International attention is the best way to protect the human rights of jailed bloggers. Write letters to Iran's leadership and politely let them know we are paying close attention to Iran's human rights situation and that you want them to free Mojtaba and Arash.
Contact information for Iran's leaders:
Leader of the Islamic Republic His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed 'Ali Khameni
The Presidency
Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
President, His Excellency Hojjatoleslam Sayed Mohammad Khatami
The Presidency
Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Head of Judiciary, His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi
Head of the Judiciary
Ministry of Justice
Park-e Shahr
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Tehran.
Fax: +98 21 879 6671 or +98 21 640 4018/4019
(Please mark "care of Director of International Affairs)
Public Relations Department
Relations Director
(All information in this post via The Committee to Protect Bloggers.)
Don't worry. Iran is on Bush's *hitlist.
Posted by: Alexa | February 22, 2005 at 08:16 PM