Journalist arrested and three others on trial

Reporters Without Borders called today on the Iranian authorities to disclose the whereabouts of journalist Ali-Reza Jabari, who was arrested late last month, and said it was very worried because he had heart problems and may have been mistreated in jail. It also called for the release of nine other imprisoned journalists, including three - Behrooz Gheranpayeh, Hossein Ghazian and Abbas Abdi - who are currently on trial for "spying" and whose families have expressed concern about trial procedure and bad prison conditions. Iran has more journalists in jail than any other Middle Eastern country. Jabari, a translator and freelance contributor to several independent newspapers, including Adineh, was arrested at his office in Teheran on 28 December by non-uniformed individuals who took him to his home, which they searched, seizing video cassettes, books and his computer hard-drive. The next day his wife went to Adareh Amaken, a city police department considered close to the intelligence service and which has summoned many journalists for questioning in recent weeks. She was told nobody by the name of her husband had been arrested. She was given the same answer at the central police station. An interview with Jabari was published on 25 December in a Persian-language newspaper in Canada, Charvand, in which he said the country's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Guide of the Islamic Revolution, wanted the crisis in Iran to get worse. Jabari, a member of the Iranian Writers' Association, has translated many Iranian works, some of them banned, into English. Gheranpayeh, Ghazian and Abdi, journalists who also run public opinion firms and whose trial began early last month, appeared in court on 6 January. One of the country's official news agencies, IRNA, published on 22 September last year a poll by the Ayandeh public opinion institute showing that 74.7 per cent of Iranians favoured a resumption of ties with the United States. Mehdi Abasi Rad, head of IRNA's political desk, also appeared in court accused of "putting out false news". Since the start of the trial, the defendants' families have been worried by the fact that the prisoners have made confessions, often a sign of severe psychological pressure. Gheranpayeh, head of the National Institute of Public Opinion and a journalist on the now-closed newspaper Nowrooz, is in Teheran's Evin prison and has not been allowed to see his family since his arrest on 16 October last. Until recently he was in a cell of his own but is now sharing one with Ghazian, a director of Ayandeh who also worked on Nowrooz and was arrested on 31 October. Abdi, another Ayandeh director and former editor of the now-closed daily paper Salam, who was picked up on 4 November is in a solitary cell.