Alireza Alinejad, brother of Masih Alinejad, sent on leave after 595 days of detention
Alireza Alinejad, brother of Masih Alinejad, an independent journalist and host and commentator on the Voice of America's Tablet program, went on leave for the first time in 595 days.
Saeed Dehghan, Alireza Alinejad's defense attorney, confirmed the news on his Twitter account on Thursday, May 13, writing that this leave, which will last five days, could lead to Mr. Alinejad's conditional release, and this legal right to conditional release will be established from June 23.
Mr. Alinejad has been in detention since October 2019. According to available information, it was in October of last year that Branch 36 of the Tehran Provincial Court of Appeals, regardless of the objections of Mr. Alinejad's defense lawyers, upheld the eight-year prison sentence issued by Branch 28 of the Tehran Islamic Revolutionary Court. In late February of last year, his lawyers' request for a retrial was also rejected.
Earlier, at the beginning of the 1400 solar year, Amnesty International, while calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Alireza Alinejad, announced that the unjust imprisonment of Masih Alinejad's brother, a journalist and women's rights advocate, is part of a campaign of harassment of relatives of civil and political activists by the Iranian authorities to force the activists to remain silent and stop their legitimate activities.
Ms. Alinejad had previously announced, at the same time as her brother was sentenced to eight years in prison, that two years of this sentence were for insulting the leader, and because of a statement by Mr. Alinejad that whenever Khamenei declared his innocence on his own radio and television, he would also reject his sister.
On the other hand, this independent journalist, who says the Islamic Republic has taken his brother hostage to "silence and punish" him, had previously said in an interview with Voice of America: "The IRGC and my sister's family had a plan to take me to Turkey under the pretext of meeting my mother and kidnap me there. My brother exposed their plan and wrote to me publicly on Instagram: "Don't go to Turkey. Now they have condemned my brother for exposing the IRGC's collusion."
Based on available information, Iranian Ministry of Intelligence agents arrested Ali Alinejad by "attacking" his home on October 2, 2019.
This is not the first time that the family of the independent journalist and founder of the “White Wednesdays” campaign to fight against compulsory hijab has been pressured by the Islamic Republic’s authorities. In late April of last year, Ms. Alinejad told VOA that her mother had been summoned to the security police and warned that she would have to answer for “telephone calls abroad.”
Source: Voice of America
