He spent 53 days in solitary confinement until he was released on a US$25,000 bail. After this incident, and with ongoing pressure on him and his career, he had to leave the country and take up residence in the USA.

Alireza Eshraghi is a journalist who was the editor in chief for Hayat-e No (“the New Life”) newspaper. In 2002, after publishing a caricature in the paper, Eshraghi was arrested and transferred to Evin Prison. He spent 53 days in solitary confinement until he was released on a US$25,000 bail. After this incident, and with ongoing pressure on him and his career, he had to leave the country and currently resides in the USA.

Hayat-e No was a reformist newspaper managed by Hadi Khamenei, the brother of the Supreme Leader and, at the time, a reformist Congressman. Khamenei was a member of the reformist campaign under the presidency of Mohammad Khatami.

According to BBC Persian and other news outlets, the publication of the paper was seized because of a caricature that was attached to an interview with Gholam-Abbas Tavassoli on the subject of “social capital”. The caricature depicts the struggle that President Roosevelt had with the judicial system during his time in office. But the caricature was interpreted in a completely different manner by the conservative hard-liners. They saw the old man in the picture as their beloved leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and therefore the caricature was considered to be a direct insult to the founder of the IRI.

The protests began with a statement from the Assembly of Experts condemning the caricature. The response was street protests in Qom and Tehran. In Qom, young mullahs flooded the streets, and in Tehran Ansar-Hizbollah, under the leadership of Hossein Allah-Karam, gathered outside the paper’s building after the Friday prayers and demanded the maximum punishment for these “mercenary journalists”.

It was after these heated protests that Eshraghi, the Editor in Chief, was arrested, and Khamenei, the managing editor, was summoned to the Special Clerical Court and prosecuted. The paper eventually issued an official apology and, shortly after, republished the paper under a new name, Hayat-e No Ejtemaei (“the Social New Life”). However, on the 7th of December 2009, the publication was seized for the second time under the charge of “Disturbing Public Peace”.