Iran: Mullahnazi regime shuts down opposition newspaper. Again

by Kal El on August 17, 2009 · Comments

Here we see totalitarian islam in action, cutting off all dissent, silencing any who dare to oppose. Freedom of speech? No such thing, as far as islam is concerned!

Iran: Opposition daily ’shut down’

Tehran, 17 August (AKI) – Iran’s main opposition daily, Etemad Melli, run by cleric and defeated presidential candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, according to his website. The website said on Monday that the paper had been closed because it had angered many hardliners when it alleged in several articles that said protesters of the 12 June election had been raped in jail.

The website said Tehran’s prosecutor’s office late on Sunday ordered Etehmad Melli to close temporarily and for this reason the paper was not published on Monday.

But Iran’s official English language Press TV on Monday quoted Tehran’s prosecutor as denying it had closed the paper.

“Etemad Melli has not been shut down,” Press TV cited prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi saying.

The paper was not distributed on Monday “following problems in its printing-office,” Mortazavi was quoted as saying.

The paper was earlier closed down after comments made by Karoubi on Etemad Melli’s website in early July in which he called re-elected hardine president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration illegitimate.

Karoubi and another defeated opposition candidate, Mir Houssein Mousavi, who was runner-up to Ahmadinejad, claimed the disupted 12 June election was rigged to secure president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election. They have vowed to continue protesting the results.

Many hundreds of people were arrested during what were the biggest mass protests seen since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

Two hundred are still detained and over 100 are facing trial on a range of charges including spying, conspiracy, rioting and vandalism.

The country’s political elite has been been in open disagreement about how to react to the protests.

Related posts:

  1. Iran: Mullahnazi’s ban opposition protest over possible election fraud
  2. Iran Officials: Round Up Opposition Leaders
  3. Iran: Senior political reformers on trial
  4. Iran: Group of powerful clerics side with opposition, call election illegitimate
  5. Iran: Mullahnazi brigade attack Italian, French, and Dutch embassies
  6. Iranian Muslim Cleric calls for execution of opposition leaders
  7. Bahrain: Newspaper closed for publishing a report that insults Iranian President Ahmadinejad
  8. Iran’s opposition verifies 69 deaths in unrest
  9. Iranian regime denounces Oxford Scholarship honoring slain election protestor
  10. A victim of the Iranian regime tells his story
Want automatic updates?
4 choices: Twitter, Facebook, RSS feed or get daily email updates
  • There is another interesting data from the new Ahmadinejad's Government that most people haven't noticed, precisely related with censorship and repression:
    Ahmadinejad has already taken de facto control of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry after purging it of officials deemed insufficiently loyal. On Sunday, he nominated Heydar Moslehi, a mid-ranking cleric, to lead the ministry, which controls a vast trove of data on Iranians as well as an extensive human and electronic surveillance infrastructure. Moslehi served as an advisor to Ahmadinejad on clerical affairs and is close to Khamenei.

    It's interesting to say that most people have focused on Ahmadinejad naming 3 women in his cabinet but most of them didn't actually published anything about Moslehi (there are very few new links about him) and those who had, just published it near the end. It really isn't surprising but it's very telling...
blog comments powered by Disqus