Iranian of the Day

CPJ: Massoud Bastani, a journalist for the reformist newspaper Farhikhtegan and Jomhoriyat, a news website affiliated with the defeated 2009 presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi, was arrested on July 5, 2009, when he ‎went to a Tehran court seeking information about his wife, journalist Mahsa Amrabadi, according to local news reports. Amrabadi, arrested ‎with two other journalists in June 2009, was released the next month.

Bastani was among more than 100 opposition figures and journalists who faced a mass, televised judicial proceeding in August 2009 on vague antistate accusations, according to news reports. On October 20, 2009, the news site Norooz reported that a court had sentenced Bastani to six years in prison for “propagating against the regime and congregating and collusion to create anarchy.”

Bastani was being held at Rajaee Shahr Prison, a facility reserved for hardened criminals, along with fellow journalist Ahmad Zaid-Abadi, according to the reformist daily Etemad.

In July 2010, Bastani’s family told reporters that he had suffered an infection in his jaw that had gone untreated in prison, the Human Rights House of Iran reported. Authorities restricted Bastani’s family visits to once every two weeks.

His wife, Mahsa Amrabadi, was found guilty in October 2010on antistate charges related to “interviews and journalistic reports,” Human Rights House reported. She was sentenced to one year in prison, although she was not immediately taken into custody, the reformist news website Jonbesh-e-Rah-e-Sabz reported. According to various news websites, Massoud Bastani suffers from serious health problems and authorities continue to refuse his requests for furlough more than 2.5 years after his arrest.