Award-winning journalist sentenced to 6 years in prison

Emadeddin Baghi (right) interviewing late Ayatollah Montazeri (left)

Iranian judiciary continues clamp down on the opposition issuing heavy prison terms for reformist figures such as Emadeddin Baghi and Mehdi Mahmoudian.

Jaras reports that Emadeddin Baghi, an award-winning Iranian journalist, was sentenced to six years in prison for publishing an interview with the late dissident cleric, Grand Ayatollah Montazeri in Persian BBC.

Baghi is charged with “propaganda against the regime” as well as “assembly and collusion against national security” for delivering this interview.

Baghi, who is also the head of Society for Defence of Detainee Rights, has been arrested on several occasions by the Islamic Republic and before this, he was sentenced to one year in prison and five years ban from journalistic activities.

He was last arrested in December 2009 during the fierce crackdown on election protesters following Ashura Day demonstrations, and he was kept in solitary confinement for over five months. He was finally released on bail last July.

Emadeddin Baghi is also the writer of 29 books amongst which The Tragedy of Democracy in Iran in which Baghi discusses political assassinations in the Islamic Republic, has been banned by the judiciary.

Another member of the Society for the Defense of Detainee Rights, Mehdi Mahmoudian, was reportedly given a confirmed sentence of five years in prison by the appellate court this week.

Mahmoudian, who is also a member of the reformist group Islamic Iran Participation Front, was also arrested last December and is currently in Karaj’s RejaiShahr Prison.

Opposition websites reports that Mahmoudian was instrumental in “blowing the whistle on the scandalous events of Kahrizak Detention Centre, in publishing the names of 70 fatal victims of the post-election government crackdown on protesters and publishing the film of the secret mass burial of these victims in plot 302 of Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery.”