May 31, 2005

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Iran.

New information:

The Observatory has been informed by the Iranian League for the Defense of Human Rights (Ligue pour la defense des droits de l'Homme en Iran - LDDHI) and Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontieres - RSF) about the decision of the Iranian authorities to release on a temporary basis Mr. Akbar Ganji, a prominent journalist and human rights defender who has been imprisoned for more than five years in Tehran's Evin prison, out of prison on May 30, 2005 so that he may receive medical treatment.

According to the information received, Evin prison officials proposed to Mr. Akbar Ganji on May 28, 2005 that he should be examined by two doctors chosen by his family to confirm his poor state of health and, on that basis, they would grant him permission to leave the prison. Mr. Ganji will be hospitalised for a week.

The Observatory welcomes the temporary release of Mr. Ganji, in which international pressure certainly played a key role. However, it urges the Iranian authorities to grant Mr. Ganji an unconditional and definitive release.

Background information:

On May 19, 2005, Mr. Akbar Ganji, of the daily newspaper Sobh-e-Emrooz, began an "unlimited hunger strike" in order to protest against his imprisonment, which he called it off on May 24, 2005, after negotiations with three prison officials who promised to give way to his demands the following week. But the following day, an assistant of the Tehran prosecutor accused him of lying and warned "the Ganji family not to continue with these lies". The journalist then told his family that he had decided to renew his fast "and this time to the end".

Mr. Akbar Ganji suffers from asthma and serious back problems, for which doctors recommended that he be immediately hospitalised. However, in detention, Mr. Ganji did not have access to adequate treatment. Moreover, under the Iranian Criminal Procedure Code, after a prisoner has served two thirds of his or her sentence, he or she can be released on parole. Since one year, while Mr. Ganji completed the non parole period of his sentence, his lawyers have been requesting that he be released on parole, in vain.

Mr. Akbar Ganji was arrested on April 22, 2000 for having written several articles suggesting the involvement of the Iranian regime, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, in the assassination of dissident opponents and intellectuals in late 1998. Mr. Ganji was also arrested because he took part in a conference in Berlin on the Iranian legislative elections and democratic reforms in April 1998. In January 2001 he was sentenced to 10 years in prison but the appeal court reduced this to six months in May 2001. However, in July 2001, the Supreme Court quashed the May sentence on technical grounds and imposed a six-year jail sentence on the charge of "threatening national security and propaganda against the institutions of the Islamic State" (See Observatory Annual Report 2004).

Mr. Akbar Ganji was being held in solitary confinement, being not allowed to phone his wife and rarely allowed to leave the prison, in spite of the specific recommandation made on June 27, 2003, by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to the Islamic Republic of Iran to put an end to this widespread practice which it considered as arbitrary in nature (See the UN document E/CN4/2004/3/Add.2, paragraphs 4 and 5).

Action requested:

Please write to the Iranian authorities, urging them to:

1. guarantee in all circumstances the physical and psychological integrity of Mr. Akbar Ganji;
2. ensure immediately the unconditional and definitive release of Mr. Akbar Ganji;
3. put an immediate end to all acts of harassment against Iranian human rights defenders;
4. conform with the provisions of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1998, in particular its article 1 which provides that "every person has the right, individually or collectively, to promote the protection and fulfilment of human rights and fundamental liberties at the national and international levels", as well as its article 12.2, which provides that "the State shall take all necessary measures to ensure the protection by the competent authorities of everyone, individually or in association with others, against any violence, threats, retaliation, de facto or de jure adverse discrimination, pressure or any other arbitrary action as a consequence of his or her legitimate exercise of the rights referred to in the present Declaration";
5. conform more generally with the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and with the other international instruments ratified by the Islamic Republic of Iran.
   
   

Addresses:

• Leader of the Islamic Republic, His Excellency Ayatollah Sayed Ali Khamenei, the Presidency, Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Faxes: + 98 21 649 5880 / 21 774 2228 (ask fax to be forwarded to Ayatollah Khamenei), Email: webmaster@wilayah.org (on the subject line write: For the attention of the office of His Excellency, Ayatollah al Udhma Khamenei, Qom)
• President, His Excellency Hojjatoleslam val Moslemin Sayed Mohammad Khatami, the Presidency, Palestine Avenue, Azerbaijan Intersection, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Fax: + 98 21 649 588, E-mail: khatami@president.ir
• Head of the Judiciary, His Excellency Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi, Ministry of Justice, Park-e Shahr, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Fax: +98 21 879 6671, Email: Irjpr@iranjudiciary.com
• Minister of Foreign Affairs, His Excellency Kamal Kharrazi, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Sheikh Abdolmajid Keshk-e Mesri Av, Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran, Faxes: + 98 21 390 1999 (number may be unreliable; please mark "care of the Human Rights Department, Foreign Ministry"), Email: matbuat@mfa.gov
• Ambassador Mohammad Reza Alborzi, Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Chemin du Petit-Saconnex 28, 1209 Geneva, Switzerland, Fax: +41 22 7330203, E-mail: mission.iran@ties.itu.int
  
  

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Geneva - Paris, May 31, 2005