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The situation of Iranian journalist Afarin Chitsaz remains unknown more than five months after her arrest on November 2, 2015.
Chitsaz is believed to be held in Evin Prison’s ward 2A, which is run by the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Unit. But the charges against her have not been announced, and she has not had access to a lawyer, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
“Unfortunately, we have no information about her situation and we don’t even know why she hasn’t gotten a lawyer during these past five months,” an anonymous source told the campaign. All we know is that she is in Evin Prison and her family is not sharing information about her.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards arrested Chitsaz in early November 2105 along with three other independent journalists, Isa Saharkhiz, Ehsan Mazandarani, and Saman Safarzaei, and accused them of being members of an “infiltration network” colluding with hostile Western governments.
On November 30, 2015, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, a senior cleric and a hardline member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, claimed that the arrested journalists had “confessed” to collaborating with foreign agencies to carry out spying activities in Iran.
However, the investigator had not been able to make a case for espionage. According to reports, Saharkhiz, Safarzaei and Mazandarani have been charged with “propaganda against the regime,” “acting against national security” and “insulting authorities.”
Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaee, the lawyer for Saharkhiz and Mazandarani, told Shargh newspaper on April 4 that he had no information about Chitsaz or the charges against her.
Chitsaz, who is a supporter of Iran’s moderate President Hassan Rouhani, started writing about foreign policy after Rouhani was elected as president in 2013. She regularly writes editorials for the newspaper ‘Iran’, the official publication of the Rouhani administration, and her columns have been carried by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA.
Read more about Afarin Chitsaz on her profile.
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