10:00GMT—6:00AM/EST
Washington,
16 September (WashingtonTV)—Reporters Without Borders [RSF] on
Wednesday called for an end to the mass trials in Tehran, following the
fifth court hearing on Monday.
Mohammad
Reza Nourbakhsh, a journalist who was arrested on 4 August, was among
the six defendants who appeared in court on Monday.
According
to the Paris-based press freedom watchdog, the six defendants all
confessed to having been manipulated by “false information on the
Internet.”
“The Iranian
judicial authorities want to humiliate journalists and bloggers by
staging forced confessions and requests for forgiveness. Journalists
and ordinary Internet users are being tried just for sending e-mails
and looking at news websites,” RSF said in a statement.
“This travesty of justice must be brought to an end,” the statement added.
According
to RSF, the prosecutor on Monday accused the social networking website
Facebook and the video-sharing website YouTube of waging a
“psychological war against Iran.”
“The
United States supported websites such as Facebook and YouTube with the
aim of influencing the rioters and undermining the government’s
position both nationally and internationally,” RSF quoted the
prosecutor … >>>
