Arrest of Nooshin Jafari and search for Saeedeh Kordi Nejad

On Wednesday, February 3, 2010 at midnight, Nooshin Jafari, a journalist with Etemad Newspaper’s Culture Section was arrested. Security forces entered and searched her home, took her personal items and computer, arrested her, and transferred her to an unknown location. Several journalists and women’s rights activists told international Campaign for Human Rights that security forces are trying to arrest Saeedeh Kordi Nejad.

Nooshin Jafari is one of the youngest Iranian journalists and one of the founding members of the Committee of Human Rights Reporters, a committee whose most active members are currently in prison and authorities are searching for its other members. Jafari was active in cultural reporting over the past few months. According to statistics published by international organizations such as Committee to Protect Journalists, an NGO based in New York, currently there are more than 47 journalists and writers in prison in Iran. Badrossadat Mofidi, Lili Farhadpour, Niloufar Laripour, Mahsa Hekmat, Parisa Kakaee, Mehraneh Atashi, Noushin Jafari, and Shiva Nazar Ahari are some of the others who were involved in publications or online journalism and are currently in prison.

Saeedeh Kordi Nejad who is a graduate economics student and was a student campaigner for Mir Hossein Moussavi’s presidential campaign was arrested on June 29, 2009 and transferred to Evin Prison. She was released on August 27, 2009. She was not home when security forces went to her home to arrest her in June. The officers put her roommate, Zoya Hassani, under pressure to tell them about Kordi Nejad’s whereabouts. Zoya Hassani who did not know where Kordi Nejad was, was faced with the officers’ anger; they beat her up, put a bag over her head, and transferred her to Evin Prison. She was released several weeks later with apologies. Saeedeh Kordi Nejad has left her home following the new wave of arrests by security forces.