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    News & Views

    Adineh's violated "public morals"

    TEHRAN, Feb 3 (AFP) - Iranian judicial authorities banned a liberal magazine accusing it of printing false material and violating "public morals."

    Gholamhossein Zakeri, chief editor of the fortnightly political and literary review Adineh, was fined nine million rials (about 1,000 dollars) while the review's publication permit was revoked for printing "material contrary to public morals," the official IRNA news agency reported late Tuesday.

    The controversial liberal review had recently printed a series of articles condoning free relations between men and women, forbidden by Islam, and deploring the absence of joy in Iranian society.

    One of these explained that "joy and pleasure have died in Iranian society where laughter is considered a sin."

    The court ruling decided to ban the review for printing "anti-Islamic" material, though it gave no details of the charges.

    Relations between the sexes have been strictly regulated in Iran since the 1979 revolution that replaced the Shah's secular regime with an Islamic government.

    The magazine's closure follows the resignation Monday of Iran's deputy culture minister in charge of press affairs, Ahmad Borqani, considered a friend of a relatively free press.

    Borqani, a former IRNA editor, had come under fire from conservatives and hinted in his farewell speech that his resignation was linked to "pressures from outside government," meaning conservative pressure groups.

    Adineh was formerly edited by the dissident writer Faraj Sarkuhi, currently in exile in Germany and condemned to a year's prison in 1997 for allegedly spying for a foreign power.

    Sarkuhi, who denied the charges, and 134 other writers and intellectuals, signed an appeal in 1994 calling for greater freedom of expression in Iran.

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