Fardin Mostafaee is a journalist, a doctoral student of media management at the University of Tehran, a member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the manager of the Saqqez Rooda’ Telegram channel.

In mid-February 2020, Mostafaee was summoned by security police in the city of Saqqez and was interrogated.

On March 5, 2020, the IFJ published a statement in which it announced that Fardin Mostafaee and a number of other journalists from Saqqez had been issued police summons. According to the statement, Mostafaee had been summoned by security authorities because he had published statistics of the number of people infected by Covid-19 in the city of Saqqez and his statistics differed from the official numbers published by the Iranian authorities.

It is still unknown what accusations have been made against Mostafaee and which institution officially issued the summons against him.

Over the past few months, Iranian Cyber Police officials have repeatedly issued warnings to online activists and media outlets over their reporting about the Covid-19 outbreak in Iran.

On February 22, 2020, a few days after news of the coronavirus outbreak in Iran had been published, the Iranian Cyber Police accused 90 online networks of having spread lies and rumours about the virus, saying they had filed about 30 different lawsuits based on these charges.

Fardin Mostafaee, who had previously lectured at the Payame Noor University, is also one of the three co-authors of the book, Smart Media Diplomacy, and he has also published a number of articles in the Jahan Sanat and Aftab journals.