IRAN* The Islamic Republic of Iran, with a population of ...

IRAN
journalists along with several others in May 2009 during International Workers
Day demonstrations.
According to RSF, authorities arrested more than 100 journalists after the June
2009 election, and 30 others fled the country, the largest exodus of journalists since
the 1979 revolution.
Mohammad Ghouchani, a journalist and editor in chief of the banned Etemad Meli
daily, who was detained from June through October 2009, reported that
intelligence agents continued to harass him during the year.
In January a court sentenced journalist and editor of Khorade-no Bahman Ahmadi-
Amoee to seven years in prison and 34 lashes, reduced in March by an appeals
court to five years' imprisonment. There was no information as to whether the
lashing sentence was upheld. After a brief visit home, Ahmadi-Amoee began
serving his sentence in Evin Prison on May 30. He remained in prison at year's
end. On June 8, the 26th Chamber of the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced his
wife Jila Baniyaghoub to one year in prison and banned her from working as a
journalist for 30 years, reportedly due to her writings related to election events and
women's rights, and October 25 press reports stated that an appeals court had
confirmed the verdict. Baniyaghoub's lawyer said there was no legal basis for the
30-year journalism ban. In June 2009 authorities arrested the two journalists in
their home. Authorities reportedly prevented Ahmadi-Amoee's access to legal
counsel and held him in solitary confinement for 65 days; his lawyer had no access
to any government evidence against him.
On May 10, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Iranian-Canadian
Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari in absentia to 13 years in prison and 74 lashes
for conspiring against the state for his presence at postelection protests, possession
of "secret" documents based on a public court document relating to arrests,
propagandizing against the system, insulting the supreme leader by implying that
he was a dictator, disrupting public order by reporting on a clash between
protesters and Basij forces, and insulting the president. Authorities arrested Bahari
in June 2009 and held him until they permitted him to leave the country in
October. Bahari remained in outside the country at year's end.
At year's end despite serious health problems, journalist and member of the
Committee for Human Rights Reporters Hengameh Shahidi continued to serve her
six-year sentence in Evin Prison for participating in postelection demonstrations
and "spreading propaganda against the holy Islamic Regime," based on an
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