{"id":1570,"date":"2020-12-09T08:46:35","date_gmt":"2020-12-09T08:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=135939"},"modified":"2020-12-09T08:46:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T08:46:35","slug":"elderly-iranian-journalist-begins-prison-term-over-protest-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/09\/elderly-iranian-journalist-begins-prison-term-over-protest-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Elderly Iranian Journalist Begins Prison Term Over Protest Coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\n

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to cease jailing members of the press for their work after a 72-year-old journalist began a three-year prison sentence over his coverage of protests last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cJailing an elderly journalist in the middle of a raging pandemic shows how much contempt the Iranian judiciary has for the press,\u201d CPJ\u2019s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said in a statement<\/a> on December 8, a day after authorities arrested Kayvan Samimi and took him to serve a three-year sentence at Tehran\u2019s Evin prison.<\/p>\n

Mansour said Samimi \u201cmust be released immediately and unconditionally, as should all of the journalists being held in Iran in retaliation for their reporting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samimi was arrested in Tehran in May 2019 while he was covering labor protests for the Iran-e Farda magazine, where he worked as editor in chief.<\/p>\n

He was freed on bail in June 2019 while facing charges of \u201ccolluding against national security\u201d and \u201cspreading antiestablishment propaganda.\u201d<\/p>\n

In April this year, a Tehran court tried Samimi in absentia, sentencing him to six years in prison.<\/p>\n

Another court confirmed his conviction in May but reduced his sentence to three years, a decision that was upheld on further appeal in June.<\/p>\n

Samimi previously served six years in prison over his coverage of the contested 2009 presidential election.<\/p>\n

Since March, Iranian authorities have granted temporary release to tens of thousands of prisoners following concerns over the spread of the coronavirus in prisons in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Many have since returned behind bars.<\/p>\n

With reporting by Radio Farda<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is urging Iran to cease jailing members of the press for their work after a 72-year-old journalist began a three-year prison sentence\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,4,23,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1571,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions\/1571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}