Iran's most prominent jailed dissident, Akbar Ganji, has been released. Ganji, a journalist, was jailed in July 2001. Ganji, whose jail term ended late Friday night, has been allowed home for the Iranian New Year holiday which starts Monday night.
However, Mahmoud Salarkia, Tehran's deputy prosecutor-general for prison affairs, told the official Islamic Republican News Agency (IRNA) this was not technically the end of the sentence. "He is on leave and his sentence will end on March 30," he said. Mowlaie said there would be some legal arguments about when the jail term ends officially. It was not immediately clear if Ganji would have to return to jail for a few days.
"All the time I was in prison was illegal," an extremely frail Akbar Ganji told a gathering of relatives, friends and journalists at his residence on Saturday. "From the very first day it was illegal. My views have not changed at all. Jail and pressures never forced me to change my views. Today, I'm more determined to say what I said six years ago."
"My husband is so weak physically now. He is just 108 pounds. But I'm happy he is back home," said his wife, Masoumeh Shafiei.. "He needs rest -- please don't put too many questions to him. He's not going to be so outspoken." "No, I'm more radical than before," Ganji, now heavily bearded, interrupted.
"We are delighted and gratified that the authorities have released Akbar Ganji, who spent six years in prison simply for carrying out his work as a journalist," said Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN). "While we welcome his release, Ganji is an outspoken critic of the Iranian regime and we are concerned that he could be harassed and re-arrested at any time."
WAN and the World Editors Forum (WEF) called on the Iranian authorities to respect freedom of expression and allow Ganji to continue his work. They also asked the government to allow Ganji to travel to Moscow in June to accept the Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize awarded by WAN to a journalist who has made an outstanding contribution to the defence and promotion of press freedom. The Golden Pen of Freedom award recognises his outstanding defence and promotion of press freedom. Ganji is also a recipient of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) 2000 International Press Freedom Award.
Ganji, a popular investigative journalist for the now-defunct reformist daily Sobh-eEmrooz, wrote a book "Dungeon of Ghosts" which implicated former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and other leading conservative figures in the murders of five writers and intellectuals in 1998. The book is said to have been a major factor in the conservative defeat in parliamentary elections of February 2000.
On July 15, 2001, Ganji was sentenced to six years in jail on charges of collecting confidential information that harms national security and spreading propaganda against the Islamic system. The charges stemmed from his participation in an April 2000 conference organised by the Heinrich B�ll Foundation in Berlin on the future of the Iranian reform movement.
Ganji was arrested once he returned to Iran on April 22, 2000 and charged with Press Law violations, based on his published work. He was also charged with threatening national security and spreading propaganda against the Islamic regime, based on his public remarks during the Berlin conference.
In January 2001, the Revolutionary Court sentenced Ganji to 10 years in prison, followed by five years of internal exile. In May, an appellate court reduced Ganji's punishment to six months in prison (he had already served more than a year by then). The Iranian Justice Department then appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that the appellate court had committed errors in reaching its decision to commute the original 10-year sentence. The Supreme Court overturned the appellate court's decision and referred the case to a different appeals court which sentenced him to an imprisonment of six years again. The ruling was "definitive," meaning that it could not be appealed.
On May 19 last year, Ganji began a hunger strike that lasted for almost three months. He was granted prison leave for medical treatment at the end of May and used the opportunity to call for a boycott of the June 17 presidential election. He resumed his hunger strike for two months when he returned to prison, ending up in hospital due to malnutrition and poor health. He ended the hunger strike and on September 3, was discharged from hospital and returned to prison.
Ganji was reportedly tortured in prison and refused to renounce his critique of the state, even if it could win his release. In a letter recently smuggled out of prison, he wrote: "Let it be known that if learning my lesson is to denounce my previous opinions, Ganji will never learn his lesson."
Ganji supported the 1979 Islamic revolution and served in the hardline Revolutionary Guards, but later shifted politically. Since his arrest, hardliners took over Parliament, and pro-reform President Mohammad Khatami was replaced in elections last year by ultra-conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dozens of pro-reform newspapers have been shut down, and those that remain have largely been cowed into toning down their criticisms. During this period, the judiciary has also closed down more than 100 publications, most of them reformist, on vague charges of insult and blasphemy.
