Reporters Without Borders Condemns New Prison Sentence Against Soheil Arabi

Following reports of a new conviction against Soheil Arabi, a prisoner of conscience and civil activist currently serving a six-year sentence, Reporters Without Borders has responded to this conviction.

Reporters Without Borders issued a statement on Wednesday, July 18, on its website, expressing outrage at the new conviction of Soheil Arabi and his ex-wife Nasrin Naimei, while criticizing the harassment of this prisoner and his ex-wife by security forces and the judicial system.

Soheil Arabi, a photographer, blogger and civil activist, was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps in December 2013 and was sentenced to death on charges of “insulting the prophet and desecrating sacred values.” However, in July 2015, one of the branches of Iran’s Supreme Court overturned his death sentence. After retrials and the overturning of his sentence, he was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison.

In June of this year, while protesting the conditions at Tehran Central Prison and Evin Prison through a hunger strike, he issued an audio message describing the situation inside the prison as extremely deplorable.

Now, the Hrana website, which publishes human rights news in Iran, has reported that Branch 28 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court, headed by Judge Moghisseh, has convicted Soheil Arabi of propaganda against the state to one year in prison and of desecrating sacred values to five years in prison.

According to the website, Nasrin Naimei, Soheil Arabi’s ex-wife, was also convicted by the same court on charges of desecrating sacred values and complicity in Arabi’s crimes to a sentence of one year and six months in prison.

Reporters Without Borders, in its Wednesday statement, strongly criticized the severity of Iran’s judicial system toward this prisoner of conscience and wrote: “The relentless cruelty of Iran’s judicial system against this citizen-journalist is aimed at detaining and punishing him for criticisms he has written about his own prison conditions and those of other prisoners in the prison.”

Reporters Without Borders deemed Soheil Arabi’s health condition following consecutive hunger strikes and the “inhumane treatment” by prison officials to be unsatisfactory.

This imprisoned photographer and citizen-journalist was recently named the winner of Reporters Without Borders’ 2017 Citizen Journalist Award.

Source: Voice of America