Iranwire – The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has urged the Islamic Republic to immediately release Shirin Saeedi, an economic journalist, and stop repressing media workers.
CPJ asked the Islamic Republic to drop all charges against Saeedi and stop imprisoning members of the press for carrying out their media responsibilities.
“Iranian authorities should immediately release economic journalist Shirin Saeedi from prison, drop all charges against her, and cease jailing members of the press for doing their jobs,” the CPJ, a non-profit working to protect press freedom, said on Thursday.
Saeedi, who has appealed her sentence, is waiting for the court to set a date for an appeals trial and is hopeful that her sentence will be reduced, according to the source.
“Iranian authorities must free journalist Shirin Saeedi immediately and unconditionally and cease the practice of arbitrarily locking up members of the press,” said CPJ Program Director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in New York.
“The lack of transparency about Saeedi’s arrest and her lengthy pre-trial detention show once again how the Iranian regime feels free to act with impunity against the country’s press,” he added.
In September 2022, Saeedi attended an international journalism workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, and later traveled to Lebanon to participate in a similar program before returning to Tehran.
Iranian authorities took issue with the nature of these workshops, according to the CPJ.
Meanwhile, despite the CPJ reaching out via email to the representative office of the Islamic Republic of Iran at the United Nations in New York to seek clarification on Saeedi’s arrest and imprisonment, it has not received any response so far.
Earlier reports from the HRANA news website said that Saeedi was sentenced to five years in prison by Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court on charges of “assembly and collusion with the intention of acting against national security.”
In recent months, the pressure on media and journalists in Iran has again intensified.
The Midpoint Institute, which specializes in journalism training, in its annual report, documented 226 cases of repression of journalists and media in Iran last year, including 144 cases involving judicial treatment of journalists.
Among these, 102 cases involved arrest and trial, while 42 entailed summoning and legal action.