LONDON, July 4 (IranMania) - An Iranian woman journalist has been banned from working as a reporter for five years for publishing an article on AIDS, her lawyer told the ISNA news agency on Tuesday.
"Elham Afrootan was banned from working as a journalist and exercising her social rights for five years because of her 'Let's make AIDS public' article in Tamadon-e Hormozgan weekly," he said, AFP reported.
She, who is in her early 20s, was ruled to have been "spreading vice" with the article.
Afrootan's lawyer, who said he would launch an appeal, added that his client also received a one-year prison term but because of her age the sentence was suspended for five years, AFP noted.
"However, she was acquitted on charges of insulting the founder of the Islamic revolution," the late Ayatollah Khomeini, he said.
Publication of Afrootan's weekly, which is managed by Ali Dirbaz, a deputy in Iran's conservative-controlled parliament, was suspended and four of its staff members were arrested in late January.
Dirbaz was sentenced to jail and the paper permanently shut down for "insulting the Islamic republic's leadership" in early April.
A Tehran criminal court revoked Tamadon-e Hormozgan's license and sentenced Dirbaz to 20 months in prison.
The weekly, printed and distributed in the southern province of Hormozgan, was accused of carrying "immoral, decadent and insulting articles against the principles of the sacred Islamic regime, Imam Khomeini, the officials and the martyrs", according to media reports.
Since 2000, Iran's judiciary has shut down scores of mostly pro-reform newspapers and other publications in a crackdown that has also seen dozens of journalists arrested.
