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A court in Tehran has sentenced the prominent activist Kouhyar Goudarzi to five years in jail, an Iranian human rights group says.

The Committee for Human Rights Reporters (CHRR) in Iran reported that Goudarzi, one of its members, had been sentenced to serve his five-year sentence in an internal exile, a prison in the eastern city of Zabol, near the Iranian border with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Goudarzi, 26, was picked up by plainclothes security officials last Julyfrom a friend's house in the capital, Tehran. At the time of his arrest, neighbours said he was taken away with two of his friends by people believed to be from Iran's ministry of intelligence.

He went missing after the incident and authorities refused to acknowledge holding him. According to the CHRR, he was later taken to Tehran's Evin prison where he spent almost two months in solitary confinement before being allowed to talk to his family for the first time since being held.

Goudarzi's mother, Parvin Mokhtareh, was also detained in the southern city of Kerman a da... >>>