MIAMI, Florida (December 16, 2014)—The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) today expressed its solidarity with The Washington Post correspondent in Iran, Jason Rezaian, in jail since July for unknown reasons, and joined an international call for his immediate release and for respect for the work of foreign correspondents.
Rezaian, 38, was arrested by Iranian officials on July 22 together with his wife, Yeganeh Salehi, also a journalist, who was freed on bail in October.
Rezaian was charged on December 6, but the details of the charges are not known and during his nearly five months in jail he has not had access to a lawyer, The Washington Post reported.
IAPA President Gustavo Mohme and the chairman of the organization’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Claudio Paolillo, publicly called for “Rezaian’s immediate release from jail and that the charges against him be made public, recognizing his right to justice and the guarantees demanded by the United Nations and the international rights for journalists in foreign countries.”
Mohme, editor of the Lima, Peru, newspaper La República, and Paolillo, editor of the Montevideo, Uruguay, weekly Búsqueda, declared that this year has been one of the grimmest for the international press. “In addition to the murder of correspondents carried out by terrorist groups we see with concern an increase in the jailing of journalists prompted by authoritarian governments that only seek to censor critics and the people’s right to know.”
Rezaian has a dual nationality – Iranian and American – and has been the correspondent of The Washington Post in Teheran since 2012. According to international news agencies the same day that he and his wife were arrested a freelance photographer who had worked for the Post and her husband were also arrested, but both were released several weeks later.
The IAPA is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the defense and promotion of freedom of the press and of expression in the Americas. It is made up of more than 1,300 print publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere and is based in Miami, Florida. For more information please go to http://www.sipiapa.org.
