News

The Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ) has sent a letter to Ahmed Shaheed,

U.N. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, to provide him with an assessment of the country's situation of press freedom ahead of his report on human rights in Iran to the U.N. General Assembly in September, the CPJ’s official web-site reads.

According to the letter, the Iranian authorities were detaining 34 journalists when CPJ conducted its annual worldwide census of imprisoned journalists on December 1, 2010, making Iran, along with China, the world's worst jailer of the press.

"In reviewing these cases and their developments, we have identified three distinct and worrying developments to which we would like to draw your attention," Joel Simon, CPJ’s Executive Director wrote in the letter.

Among these developments are uncertain prison terms for detained journalists, inhumane treatment and a lack of due process, Simon noted.