The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders called on the Iranian government to respond to its demand for information on the fate of Iranian journalist Pirooz Davani, missing since August 1998, in a statement sent to AFP Saturday.
In a letter to Iran's chief justice, Ayatollah Mahmud Hashemi Shahrudi, the head of Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, described the case as "extremely worrying," pointing out that a dozen journalists are in prison in Iran.
He said the organization had first asked for news of Davani two years ago, and quoted the Iranian paper Kar-e Karagar as reporting "rumors" that he had been executed.
(Similar information was contained in a US State Department report on February 25, 2000, which said Davani "is believed to have been killed for his political beliefs and activism.")
(A website devoted to Davani said the former Pirooz newspaper editor-in-chief and human rights activist, who served a four year term in Tehran's Evin prison in the early 1990s, had been "carried off by the Iranian security force.")
In its annual report for 2000, Reporters Without Borders noted that Davani had been imprisoned from 1982 to 1989 for membership of the Tudeh communist party - TEHRAN (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
