Journalist Mahsa Amrabadi summoned to serve out jail term

This article was last updated on May 21, 2022

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Iranian journalist Mahsa Amrabadi has been summoned to serve out a one-year prison term.

She was summoned to the notorious Evin Prison on Tuesday, sources told the Green Voice of Freedom.

In October 2010, a Tehran Revolutionary Court presided over by Judge Moghiseh sentenced Amrabadi to a year in prison on “propaganda” charges related to her “interviews and journalistic reports.” She later received an additional one-year jail sentence and a four-year suspended term on charges of “assembly and collusion against national security.”

She is the wife of imprisoned journalist Masoud Bastani. The couple were arrested in the aftermath of the widely disputed 2009 presidential election. While Amrabadi was released after spending more than two months in prison, her husband has not yet been granted furlough since his arrest in July 2009. He is currently serving a six-year jail term in Rejaee Shahr prison in the city of Karaj. 

Amrabadi was detained once again on 1 March 2011 while protesting the house arrest of Green Movement leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi. She was released a few weeks later.

In an interview with opposition site Kaleme, Amrabadi’s mother Maryam Naghi called on the authorities to bring an end to the imprisonment of dissidents. She also urged the judiciary to transfer her daughter and son-in-law to the same detention centre so as to ease the family’s suffering. “It’s quite hard for us to have to go to Evin and Rajaee Shahr prisons every week to see our loved ones. The least they could do is to hold them at the same prison. It would make it easier [for us] to visit them.” (See Mana Neyestani’scartoon regarding the story)

Authorities have also summoned Green Movement supporter Omid Kharazmian to serve a four-year prison sentence at Evin. Kharazmian, a hotel employee, was arrested at his home on 8 February 2010 after having attended opposition protests in late December 2009.

According to a post on his Facebook page, he was obligated to present himself to prison authorities on 24 April. 

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