Commission backs Iranian journalists

The parliamentary commission criticised the courts

By Tehran correspondent Jim Muir

A special commission of Iran's reformist-dominated parliament has upheld the complaints of journalists imprisoned as part of what is seen as a hardline crackdown on the liberal press.

The commission said the detention and trial of some of the journalists was illegal, and called on the judiciary to review the cases - but such a review is unlike to happen.

The parliamentary commission had spent several months investigating in detail the complaints of the imprisoned journalists.

It visited them in prison several times, paid visits to the press court and held discussions with senior judges and judicial officials.

In its final report read out to parliament it pulled no punches.

Wrongly prosecuted

It said the way the courts had been operating was illegal on three counts:

• Journalists had been arrested and held in temporary detention although the legal conditions for such detentions had not been met and they should have been released on bail.
• Some trials had taken place behind closed doors and without a jury which the commission described as an indefensible violation of the law.
• It also said that some of the journalists had been wrongly prosecuted for articles published before recent legislation, which made them, rather than the publishers legally responsible.

The commission urged the judiciary to revise the verdicts issued against some of the journalists and to order retrials if necessary.

But the Iranian judiciary - dominated by hardliners and completely independent of both government and parliament - is unlikley to heed the commission's recommendations.

Bad feeling

Under the constitution, parliament can demand only that the judiciary should produce a proper response to the charges.

That may well be robust, given the current state of bad feeling between the two bodies.

Many reformist deputies have been highly critical of the spate of prosecutions against liberal figures.

They have accused the judiciary of acting in a highly partisan manner.

The commission's report is likely to aggravate relations still further.