More than 100 prominent journalists from 47 countries have sent a petition to the Iranian government calling for the release of the Tehran correspondent for Newsweek, who has been held without charge in an Iranian jail since 21 June.
The Guardian writes that more than 100 prominent journalists from 47 countries have sent a petition to the Iranian government calling for the release of Maziar Bahari, the Tehran correspondent for Newsweek, who has been held without charge in an Iranian jail since 21 June.
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| Maziar Bahari |
Among the signatories are Christiane Amanpour, Mariane Pearl, Fintan O’Toole, Lydia Cacho, Wilf Mbanga, Ted Koppel and Tom Friedman. The petition urges the justice minister to intervene in Bahari’s case and see that he is released immediately.
Bahari was detained with at least 23 other local and international journalists amid post-election protests. On 30 June, Fars News agency posted an 11-page "confession" from Bahari in which he allegedly blames western media groups for the unrest that followed the election.
In a press conference at the OPC in June, Roxana Saberi, a journalist who was held in an Iranian prison from January until May, spoke of the escalating arrests and political climate for journalists and any citizen who the Iran government deems a threat.
Newsweek editor Jon Meacham wrote on July 11 in "An Opportunity for Tehran" : Some in the government of Iran would like to portray Bahari as a kind
of subversive or even as a spy. He is neither. He is a journalist, a
man who was doing his job, and doing it fairly and judiciously, when he
was arrested. Maziar Bahari is an agent only of the truth as best he
can see it, and his body of work proves him to be a fair-minded
observer who eschews ideological cant in favor of conveying the depth
and complexity of Iranian life and culture to the wider world. Few have
argued more extensively and persuasively, for instance, that Iran’s
nuclear program is an issue of national pride, not just the
leadership’s obsession.
Read more from "Petition to Free Journalist Held in Iran" from the Guardian >>