News Editor Ali Ghazali Re-arrested

Ali Ghazali, a journalist and editor at Baztab Emrooz and Ayandeh Online news sites, was arrested by security agents for the second time on Sunday, November 29, after the CEO of Sepah Bank, Kamel Taghavinejad, a man who is thought to have been involved in Iran’s 2011 embezzlement scandal, filed a complaint against him.

He is being held at Evin Prison but the charges against him are not known.

Ghazali was also arrested in spring 2013 after he reported on Baztab that there was recorded evidence of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussing vote-rigging during the disputed 2009 presidential election.

Over the past few months, Ghazali has exposed secret dealings between Taghavinejad and Hamid Pour-Mohammadi Gol-Sefidi, the deputy president of the Iranian Central Bank during Ahmadinejad’s presidency who spent time behind bars for his involvement in the scandal.

The embezzlement scandal, which is the largest fraud case in Iranian history, involved forging documents to obtain approximately $2.6 billion in credit from state and private banks to buy state-owned companies. In the ensuing investigation, several senior banking and financial officials under former President Ahmadinejad were mentioned, including Taghavinejad.

Reports on the scandal provoked a strong reaction from the public and further discredited Ahmadinejad’s government and the Islamic regime.

In May 2014, Amir Mansour Arya, a billionaire and an Ahmadinejad supporter, was hanged for his involvement in the scam.

Following Ghazali’s first arrest on April 27, 2013, Foad Sadeghi, the founder of the Baztab website, was also arrested. The news site was blocked shortly after.

Before being blocked, the Baztab Emrooz website published numerous reports on the secret financial dealings of governmental officials. The site also exposed details of a contract between Iran and China that revealed the extent of financial concessions given to China by the Islamic Republic. It also reported on shady deals between Babak Zanjani, a billionaire who has been subsequently arrested, and Saeed Mortazavi, the former head of the Social Security Organization and Tehran’s prosecutor general, who was recently disbarred.

Prior to Ghazali and Sadeghi’s arrests, security forces repeatedly threatened the two journalists and the news site’s headquarters were searched.

Both men were released on June 18, 2013, three days after Hassan Rouhani was elected president.

According to an informed source who spoke to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran shortly after their arrests, Ghazali’s mother was told “not to have any hopes of seeing your son outside of prison for a few years,” and that Ghazali had been charged with “creating public anxiety through repetition of claims of election fraud in the 2009 election.”

The Islamic authorities have yet to release information on the new charges against Ghazali or when a trial will take place.