Guards Arrest Reformist Journalist Hormoz Sharifian

The Revolutionary Guards arrested freelance journalist Hormoz Sharifian on Saturday, October 22 and took him to an unknown location. According to an anonymous source who spoke to the reformist website Saham, Sharifian was arrested without a warrant outside the home of one of his relatives.

Saham News reported that the arrest followed a summons for Sharifian to attend court in early October.

Before the arrest, the Guards-owned Fars News Agency had launched an attack on reformist journalists, publishing an article that criticized their conduct and included screenshots from the Twitter accounts of several of the journalists. The article accused the “gang” of journalists of taking part in practices that “insult the regime.” 

“Silence in the face of the dangerous behavior of this media gang and their insults to the officials and the pillars of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic...has led to a daily expansion of their sabotage,” the Fars article said.

The report also specifically singled out tweets posted by journalists who had expressed support or admiration for the satirist Aydin Sayar Sari, who has also been targeted by the news agency in connection with articles he published for Ghanoon newspaper and other media. The weekly newspaper Seda was closed down because it published controversial articles by Sayar Sari. 

Given the recent conduct of some people in the public eye, the Fars Agency article said, it was “necessary more than ever to put an end, once and for all, to the brazen, vulgar and gross behavior of this gang.”