Reporters Without Borders (RSF) firmly condemns progressive cleric Ahmad Montazeri’s arrest yesterday. The editor of the website of his late father, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, he was returned to prison after being summoned before a special court for clerics.
Tried behind closed doors and without a defense lawyer on 20 October, Montazeri was sentenced on 27 November to ten years in prison for endangering state security, ten years for publishing a “classified audio recording” and another year for anti-government “propaganda.”
He was prosecuted for posting an old recording on the website on 9 August 2016 in which his father could be heard criticizing the wave of executions [of more than 30,000] political prisoners in the summer of 1988.
