Three editors convicted for defamation and spreading false news by the Iranian court
The Tehran’s Media Court condemned three local editors from three different news websites for allegedly ‘spreading false news and defamation’. The editors whose names were not revealed work for the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA), the Bultannews news website, and the energy news website NeftEMA. As ISNA reported, the case was made when the National Iranian Gas Transmission Company filed a complaint against NeftEMA for ‘spreading misinformation, defamation, and insult’. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) denounced these charges and requested they be dropped immediately. ‘If the Iranian government has a credible case against the editors of ISNA, NeftEMA, and Bultannews, they should try them openly and publicly. Closed door trials of journalists cannot be considered fair or impartial and the Iranian judiciary has a history of holding opaque judicial proceedings that lack credibility,’ said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa programme coordinator Sherif Mansour.
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