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Four science journalists are being held in a top-security prison in
Iran after publishing an allegedly offensive cartoon in the science magazine
Farad. Naser Arabha, the editor-in-chief, was arrested in Tehran on 11 April
along with three unnamed colleagues, according to a report published last
week by Amnesty International.

The government’s Islamic Republic News Agency says the journalists were
arrested for publishing a cartoon ‘which insulted the founder of the Islamic
Republic, Imam Khomeini’. It reportedly shows a wounded religious figure
playing football.

Amnesty is particularly worried for the detainees because they are being
held incommunicado in Evin prison by the government’s security service.
Amnesty fears that Naser Arabha and his colleagues will not get a fair trial
if their case is heard before the Islamic revolutionary courts.

Article 34 of the Iranian press law stipulates that ‘matters concerning
the press fall within the jurisdiction of the general courts, where the
defendants should be tried in the presence of a jury’.

Brian Dooley of Amnesty says that the prisoners’ circumstances contravene
the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Iran has signed. This grants detainees
the right to legal defence and to appeal against any verdict.

According to a report by Agence France Presse, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati,
a member of Iran’s Council of Guardians, has called for ‘the maximum penalty’
(the death sentence) to be issued in this case. The arrests followed demonstrations
outside the offices of Farad in protest at the ‘insulting cartoon’.

Amnesty International last week urged sympathisers with the detainees
to send polite letters, prefaced with ‘Your Excellency’, to three leading
figures in Iran: President Rafsanjani; Ayatollah Yazdi, the Minister of
Justice; and Mahammed Khatami, the Minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance.