UPDATE, SEPT 3:

While Iranian authorities have threatened to detain journalist Keyvan Samimi, a political prisoner from 2009 to 2015, he remains free for now.

Samimi’s lawyer has initiated a “medical exception” process to delay or cancel the sentence because of the editor’s lung and heart problems. There will be medical and judiciary review board meetings to make a decision.


ORIGINAL ENTRY, SEPT 1: Iran’s authorities have again detained veteran journalist and political prisoner Keyvan Samimi (pictured).

Samimi, 72, was summoned to Tehran’s Evin Prison on August 24 to serve a three-year sentence imposed over his reporting and political commentary.

He said just before returning to Evin:

I will go to prison and when I get out I will continue to live according to my ideals and beliefs.

I’m not looking to build a political platform for myself. I’m more of an idealist and my actions are very transparent. I don’t believe in working in secret and that’s why I wrote about social movements on my Telegram channel. I know the authorities are sensitive about it. They call me a saboteur who incites riots, even though I believe in non-violence.

Samimi is editor-in-chief of the magaizine Iran-e Farda, former editor-in-chief at the now-banned daily Nameh (Letter), and a board member of the Society in Defense of Press Freedom.

In May 2019, he was arrested at a Labor Day rally in Tehran. A year later, a Revolutionary Court imposed the three-year sentence for “assembly and collusion against the state”. He was also accused in interrogation of “propaganda against the regime” and “insulting the Supreme Leader”.

Samimi was also sentenced to six years in prison and banned from political and cultural activities for 15 years in June 2009, amid the mass protests over the disputed Presidential election. He explained:

When I got out of prison in 2015, I felt the level of fear among my friends and activists was even greater than before. I noticed that very few people were expressing themselves and even that’s not tolerated by the state.

The authorities feel they need to silence individuals and hold the Sword of Damocles over their head or send them to prison in order to prevent [dissent] from spreading….

You accuse me of trying to overthrow the state; that’s your opinion. But I will continue my peaceful struggle.

Iran is the second-greatest jailer of journalists in the world, on a per capita basis, exceeded only by Turkey.