The managing editor of Iran’s moderate Ettelaat daily will stand trial for defying a ban on reporting on Mohammad Khatami, the country’s former reformist president.
The paper’s managing editor, Mahmoud Doaei, who is also a cleric, was summoned for questioning on Sunday, December 13, 2015, before the case is handed to a special court for clerics.
Iran’s judicial spokesman Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said the ban on covering “seditionist leaders” ordered by Iran’s Supreme National Security Council “remains in place.”
“Anybody acting against this instruction will be prosecuted the same way Doaei is prosecuted,” Mohseni-Ejei said according to Iranian state television.
The indictment against Doaei comes after Ettelaat, one of Iran’s oldest newspapers, published an image of Khatami along with comments he made in an interview with Lebanon’s As-Safir newspaper.
Following the indictment, Doaei responded with a front-page editorial calling on Iran’s president to intervene.
“This demand is based on taste, not laws, and Ettelaat daily won’t accept it,” Doaei wrote. He also said the Khatami media ban is a violation of the country’s constitution, which prohibits censorship.
Khatami served as Iran’s president between 1997 and 2005. He refused to recognize the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009 and has repeatedly called for the release of opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi. Authorities routinely refer to Khatami, Mousavi and Karroubi as “seditionist leaders.”
The ban on reporting Khatami’s name, image and comments was imposed by the hardline judiciary, which acts independently of President Rouhani’s administration. Following the ban, Khatami has almost vanished from public view, and he is only referred to as the “head of the reformist government” in Iranian media.
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