Cartoon 95: No Journalists in Prison

“I do not believe that an individual would be detained or put in prison for being a journalist. An individual can be a reporter, a journalist, and have committed a crime. But that crime is not necessarily always related to their profession, to the profession that they’re practicing,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour during a television interview, when she asked him about the detainment of Jason Rezaian, the Washington Post journalist and his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist, who were detained in July 2014.

In the aftermath of the disputed 2009 presidential election, Iran has prosecuted and imprisoned dozens of journalists and bloggers on national security charges. Five years later, while several journalists have been released after serving their long prison terms, many more remain in prison. This is cartoonist Touka Neyestani’s take on the situation.