Liberal Iranian daily closes under pressure
TEHRAN, Sept 5 (Reuters) - Iranian authorities have forced an outspoken
liberal newspaper to close after it questioned the principle of Islamic
retribution and printed a call for the supreme clerical leader to avoid
factional politics, editors said on Sunday.
A member of the editorial board of the daily Neshat told Reuters publication
was suspended after the hardline judge of the special Press Court on Saturday
threatened to send in security forces if the newspaper published the next
day.
However, no formal order banning the newspaper, which backs President
Mohammad Khatami's reforms, has so far been issued, said the board member,
who asked not to be identified.
"The judiciary said that we have to close down but if we did so
voluntarily then they would not send in anyone to lock us out of the building,"
he said. "We pleaded to be able to publish until a court hearing,
but they did not agree."
The closure, the latest in a series of attacks on the reformist press,
follows a firestorm of criticism by conservatives who accused Neshat of
opposing the Islamic principle of retribution -- summed up in the injunction
"an eye for an eye" -- in recent essays on capital punishment.
Neshat reporters say a second charge took issue with an open letter
to supreme clerical leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei from a veteran opposition
politician asking him to steer clear of partisan politics in the run-up
to next year's parliamentary elections.
Neshat's editor, Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, said he remained optimistic
publication could resume soon. "With the negotiations already underway,
we are optimistic that within the next 48 hours there is a chance the ban
may be lifted."
The threat of forced closure against the newspaper was made, say staff
members, at a meeting on Saturday with the conservative judge of the Press
Court, Saeed Mortazavi.
Editors thought they had defused the crisis last week with a public
apology for an essay that suggested Iran's Islamic criminal code was at
odds with the country's international commitments on human rights .
However, pressure increased after the supreme leader said anyone questioning
Islamic principles, such as the law of retribution that covers capital
punishment, could face execution.
Conservatives were also incensed by an open letter to Khamenei from
Yadollah Sahabi, the 95-year-old co-founder of the opposition Freedom Movement
of Iran, urging him to "distance himself from the conservatives."
According to Neshat journalists, press court judge Mortazavi told Shamsolvaezin
and other editors the letter was an insult against the leader, a crime
under Iranian law that carries a maximum of two years in prison.
The pro-reform Neshat is led by some of the journalists who earlier
published the liberal Tous, banned almost one year ago by a hardline court.
Tous itself had been launched to replace another banned newspaper.
In July, a court closed the leading reformist daily Salam for publishing
a secret plan advocating an assault on the liberal press.
That provoked student demonstrations that culminated in some of the
worst unrest since the 1979 Islamic revolution after police and hardline
vigilantes attacked a dormitory to quash the protests.
Links