Campaigners for press freedom around the world are demanding the release
of journalists from the Iranian science magazine Farad, jailed for publishing
a cartoon. On 16 September a court sentenced editor Naser Arabha to six
months in prison. The cartoonist, M. Karimzadeh, has been jailed by another
court for one year and the magazine banned permanently.
Francois Laillou, of the organisation Reporteurs Sans Frontieres, says
they have arranged to ‘twin’ Arabha with Pascal Delanoy, editorial director
of radio station France Info, who is publicising the editor’s plight. They
hope Arabha may be released in November, when he will have served six months
since his arrest.
The trouble stems from an article on the state of soccer in Iran in
the magazine’s April issue (This Week, 16 May). It was illustrated with
a cartoon of a football-playing amputee Imam. The court held that this was
a representation of the late Ayatollah Khomeini and an ‘offence against
the values of the Islamic Revolution’.
