Between Turkey arresting a newspaper editor for posting critical tweets and Iran convicting a Washington Post reporter in a shady espionage trial, it has been a rough couple of weeks for press freedom in the Middle East.
Tehran’s Revolutionary Court found Post reporter Jason Rezaian guilty of at least one of four charges, including one count that he spied on Tehran’s nuclear program, the newspaper reported early Monday morning.
“News of a verdict in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court initially came early Sunday, but court spokesman Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei did not specify the judgment,” the Post reported. “In a state TV report late Sunday, Mohseni-Ejei said definitively that Rezaian, The Post’s correspondent in Tehran since 2012, was found guilty.”
Rezaian, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, was accused by the court of reporting details of Tehran’s nuclear program back to the United States government. But details of the verdict handed down to the Post correspondent, who has languished in prison for more than 14 months, are sketchy at best. The Post and the reporter’s family point to the mystery surrounding his “belated and opaque” guilty verdict as proof of a sham trial.
“Rezaian faced four charges — the most serious of which was espionage — and it was not immediately clear whether he was convicted of all charges,” the report noted. “Rezaian and The Post have strongly denied the accusations, and his case has drawn wide-ranging denunciations including statements from the White House and media freedom groups.”
Worse still, it is unclear what sentence has been handed to Rezaian. All that is known at this time is that the judge who heard the case is known for imposing particularly harsh sentences, and that the reporter could face between 10 to 20 years in prison.
The guilty verdict is “an outrageous injustice” and “contemptible,” said post executive editor Martin Baron.
“Iran has behaved unconscionably throughout this case, but never more so than with this indefensible decision by a Revolutionary Court to convict an innocent journalist of serious crimes after a proceeding that unfolded in secret, with no evidence whatsoever of any wrongdoing,” he said in a statement.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has suggested the idea of freeing Rezaian in exchange for Iranians who have been imprisoned by the United States for violating economic sanctions against Tehran. The United States government has so far ignored this suggestion.
Earlier, on Friday, authorities in Turkey arrested the editor-in-chief of an Istanbul-based English-language newspaper for posting tweets critical of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Associated Press reported.
As police hauled Today’s Zaman editor-in-chief Bulent Kenes from his office by police, supporters reportedly chanted: “Free media cannot be silenced!”
“A court issued a warrant for his arrest for tweets that a Turkish prosecutor says insult Erdogan,” the AP reported. “Kenes, who received a suspended sentence earlier this year for insulting the president, denies the accusation, insisting he is exercising his right to free speech.”
“Dozens of people have been prosecuted under a previously seldom-used law that bars insults to the president. Free speech advocates say the law is being used aggressively to muffle dissent,” the report added.
