The arrest of blogger Sina Motallebi: Day 13
: Hoder has an update on the arrest of the Iranian blogger:
Sina’s wife has finally spoken out in her weblog. She’s said that Sina needs everybody to be calm so he get out earlier. She has denied all the things that LA-based satelite Persian TVs say about Sina, and has added that she hadn’t talked to anyone except to ISNA on the first day. (God damn this indirect quoting!)
In other important developments, Iranian judiciary spokesperson (who is a radical Islamist and has just appointed to his new job) has said that there is no journalist in Iranian prisions! He said that a few people who call themselves journalists, are not arrested because of their writings.
This is their newest tactic. They arrest journalists and activists and throw them in jail, because of possesing alcoholic drinks, or “illegal” video or music tapes, etc. So this way they don’r pay any political price for these actions and make the charges more reasonable for the outside world. They have done the same thing for Alireza Jabbari, a writer and translator recently.
So I think they would announce that Sina’s charges are not political at all and he is not there because he is a journalist. beware of their new tricks….
Journalists must embrace, protect, and report on Motallebi as one of their own, as a journalist who is under threat because of what all journalists do.
Why haven’t I seen a story about this in the New York Times and the Washington Post and the Guardian and the Times of London and on FoxNews and CNN? I think I’ll pitch it to someone I respect myself.
They all did stories about weblogging when it was new and interesting and fun.
Well, now it matters.
