UPDATE: This post was updated on January 19, 2016, to reflect that additional organizations have signed the letter. A total of 16 organizations have now signed the letter. Human rights organisations Freemuse and the International Campaign for Human Rights ...
The head of Telegram, the most popular social media network in Iran, has again categorically denied making any concessions to Tehran regarding censorship. On January 13, 2016, the Iranian media widely reported a ...
No Access to Counsel or Family Visits during 7-Month “Temporary Detention” After nearly seven months of “temporary detention” without access to his lawyer or family visits, Esmail Abdi, Secretary General of ...
The well-known reformist journalist Reyhaneh Tabatabaie surrendered herself to Evin Prison authorities on January 12, 2016, to serve a one-year prison sentence. Tabatabaie’s imprisonment follows a string of arrests of journalists and reformists, ...
Two-Day Ordeal Included Solitary Confinement and Incarceration with Criminals The poet Hila Sedighi, who was arrested and held for two days amidst an intensifying crackdown on independent artistic and cultural figures in Iran, ...
After two months of detention, the prominent reformist journalist and political activist Issa Saharkhiz has resumed his hunger strike, in protest against his ongoing detention at Evin Prison. Mehdi Saharkhiz, told the International ...
The Islamic Republic of Iran’s near total monopoly on the broadcast of film and television series has effectively ended following the January 7, 2016, decision by Netflix to make its vast archive available ...
Hila Sedighi was released on bail on the evening of Saturday, January 9 in Tehran. The authorities did not provide any details regarding the reason for her arrest on January 7, 2016. Further updates regarding her developing ...
Photo by Reza Baharinejad from Hila Sedighi's Facebook page Freedom of Artistic Expression Under Assault in Iran Update: Hila Sedighi was released on bail ...
State Filtering Body Refuses to Block the Service An official Iranian state censorship body has resisted calls by hardliners in Iran to block the Telegram messaging service, the most popular social media application in ...
Legal Expert Decries Refusal to Release Sosha Makani on Bail till Investigation is Completed Sosha Makani, Persepolis soccer club goalkeeper and member of the Iranian national soccer team at the 2014 World Cup, was ...
The mother of a student who has not been heard from since soon after his arrest in Tehran in 1999 has dismissed the Iranian Judiciary’s claim that there was no evidence he was ever arrested. Saeed Zeinali ...
Christian is Arrested and Taken to Unknown Location Despite President Hassan Rouhani’s pledges during his election campaign in 2013 that “All ethnicities, all religions, even religious minorities, must feel justice,” the targeting of Christian converts ...
An Appeals Court judge has admonished collaborators of a popular music site for ignoring repeated warnings that they were operating illegally and having ties with Iranian singers abroad opposed to the Islamic Republic. Mehdi Rajabian, musician/founder of BargMusic, ...
The Iranian government’s most senior female official plans to take legal action against an extremist publication for comparing her to a prostitute. The weekly Ya Lesarat, the mouthpiece of the shadowy, semi-official vigilante group Ansar-e Hezbollah...
A prolonged delay in hearing children’s rights activist Atena Daemi’s appeal against her 14-year prison sentence is causing a serious deterioration in her health, particularly as she has not been able to leave prison for the past ...
The daughter of prisoner of conscience Mohammad Hossein Rafiee fears her elderly father is in danger of attracting serious diseases, including HIV, because of a health epidemic in Ward 8 of Evin ...
Family Hopes for Taheri’s Release at End of Prison Term in 2016 With the lifting of the death sentence against spiritual leader Mohammad Ali Taheri, his family is hoping for ...
The well-known Iranian poet Mohamadreza Haj Rostambegloo was released on bail from Karaj’s Central Prison last week, following his third arrest by the authorities in Iran in the last six years. His mother, Maryam Soltani, told the ...
Hassan Sheikh Aghaei, the editor of a Kurdish-Persian news site, was released on two billion rials (about $67,000) bail on December 6, 2015, after 60 days in detention in Mahabad Prison, 30 days of which he spent ...
Imprisoned children’s rights activist Omid Alishenas has been refused bail while waiting for the Appeals Court to hear his case. “Seven months have passed since Omid was sentenced in the preliminary court but the Appeals Court has ...
The Rouhani administration and the hardline-dominated Judiciary in Iran are engaged in an increasingly direct confrontation over the ability of Iranian media to publish images of the former (1997-2005) reformist President Mohammad Khatami. With claims and counterclaims volleying ...
The teachers’ union activist Mahmoud Beheshti Langroudi was allowed to leave Evin prison on December 16, 2015, on temporary medical leave after a 20-day hunger strike to protest his nine-year prison sentence. Two days earlier, Mahmoud Habibi, ...
Two musicians and a filmmaker who were jointly sentenced to six years in prison and fined 200 million rials (about $6,650) each for “insulting the sacred” and “propaganda against the state,” are awaiting a ruling by a ...
After nearly four decades of tight control on state media such as the Iranian radio and television programming, Friday prayer pulpits, educational curriculum, unabated censorship of the press, books, films, all artistic forms, and the Internet, and ...