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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.

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