Iranian Journalist Samimi Released From Prison

RFL/RE – Iranian journalist Keyvan Samimi has been released from prison after being jailed last year owing to his presence at a protest rally in May 2019, according to a reformist newspaper.

The Sharq daily on January 1 reported Samimi’s release from Semnan prison, 200 kilometers east of Tehran. It did not say on what date the 73-year-old, who is a member of the Religious Nationalists Council, was released.

Samimi was imprisoned in Tehran’s Evin prison last year to serve a two-year sentence after being found guilty of “assembly and collusion against the state” relating to his attendance of a protest rally in front of parliament marking May Day in 2019.

He was temporarily released in February due to poor health, but was sent to Semnan just three months later after he was handed new charges of harming national security.

After being sent back to prison, new charges of conspiracy and collusion were filed against him in August. The developments came after he had earlier in the year called the death of imprisoned writer Baktash Abtin a “premeditated murder.”

In December, he reportedly issued a message from prison supporting the ongoing nationwide protests that erupted following the September death in custody of Mahsa Amini. The 22-year-old’s death came after she was arrested for allegedly wearing her head scarf improperly.

Rights groups say that the government’s violent crackdown on the protests, which have included calls against Iran’s clerical establishment, has resulted in the deaths of nearly 500 people, including 62 children.

Samimi was believed to be the oldest journalist to have been jailed in the Islamic republic. He has been editor-in-chief of Nameh magazine and an editor of Iran Farda magazine.

Following his rearrest in May, 200 civil and political activists signed a statement declaring that Iran’s judicial, security, and political authorities would be responsible for any “negligence and misfortune” Samimi might encounter in prison.