Journalism
Baghi and Akbar Ganji are credited with uncovering the responsibility of Iranian security personnel for the Chain Murders, in which a number of dissident intellectuals were found murdered, apparently by a serial killer. Baghi and Ganji both argued that orders for the murders came from high in the Iranian government. [5]
Two newspapers at which Baghi worked were banned by the Iranian government: Faith in 2000, [6] and Joumhouriat in 2003. [7] His books on the Chain Murders were also banned. [8]
Baghi has also written extensively about the death penalty, of which he is an active opponent. The United Nations and other international human rights groups have relied heavily his work, particularly on juveniles sentenced to death, for their own reports. [9] Baghi estimates that more than 10,000 people have been executed in Iran since the Islamic Revolution. [1]
Arrests
Emadeddin Baghi has been arrested several times by the government of Iran on charges described by international human rights organizations as politically motivated.
In 2000, he was charged with "endangering national security" for his writings about the Chain Murders in the late 1990s. He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by Revolutionary Court on charges brought by the intelligence ministry and state television. His newspaper Faith was also banned and two of its editors also imprisoned. [6] [10] He served two years of that sentence, and one year was suspended. [2]
In 2003, Judge Babayee of Branch 6 of the Revolutionary Court gave Baghi a one-year suspended term for "endangering national security" and "printing lies" in his book, The Tragedy of Democracy in Iran. [2] Baghi received another one-year prison sentence for "acting against national security" on 15 October 2007, when he was summoned by Tehran's revolutionary court on the charges of "propaganda against the Islamic Republic" and "divulging state secret information". The Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official who stated, "Baghi was doing his activities against national security under the cover of defending prisoners' rights". [11]
Baghi's imprisonment was condemned by Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi and by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders. [12] Amnesty International designated him a prisoner of conscience and campaigned for his release. [13]
Baghi was among the numerous journalists and reformists detained by the government of Iran on 28 December 2009 in the wake of clashes between demonstrators and police at the Ashura protests. [14] [15] In August 2010, Baghi was sentenced to a year's imprisonment and a five-year ban on political activity. On 22 September, opposition websites reported that Baghi had been sentenced to an additional six years' imprisonment for "propaganda against the state" and other charges for having broadcast an interview with dissident cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri on BBC Persian. [16] Amnesty International again named him a prisoner of conscience. [17]
Five years of the sentence was later overturned by an appeals court, and Baghi was released on in June 2011. In the months prior to his release, he and other prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest the deaths of dissidents Haleh Sahabi and Hoda Saber [18]
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Akbar Ganji is an Iranian journalist, writer and a former member of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He has been described as "Iran's preeminent political dissident", and a "wildly popular pro-democracy journalist" who has crossed press censorship "red lines" regularly. A supporter of the Islamic revolution as a youth, he became disenchanted in the mid-1990s and served time in Tehran's Evin Prison from 2001 to 2006, after publishing a series of stories on the murder of dissident authors known as the Chain Murders of Iran. While in prison, he issued a manifesto which established him as the first "prominent dissident, believing Muslim and former revolutionary" to call for a replacement of Iran's theocratic system with "a democracy". He has been described as "Iran's best-known political prisoner".
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Capital punishment is a legal punishment in Iran.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
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