IRAN
Iranian gets ten years for a cartoon resembling the late Ayatollah
Khomeini (1992-93)
The Iranian Supreme Court revoked an earlier one year sentence of
cartoonist Manouchehr Karimzadeh by the Islamic Revolutionary
Courts, and upped it to ten years in prison on October 15, 1993.
Karimzadeh's cartoon, showing a soccer player, appeared in Farad
magazine in 1992. It is not clear from the cartoon whether the man
is running with one leg bent and his hand blurred in motion, or
missing one or both limbs. The drawing accompanied an article about
the poor state of Iranian soccer. The player, who is wearing a turban
in the drawing, offended religious authorities who deemed the character
resembled the late Islamic Imam Ayatollah Khomeini. Farad was immediately
banned and all copies of the magazine removed from newstands nationwide,
while Naser Arabha, Farad's editor-in-chief, was sentenced to six
months in prison. Karimzadeh received fifty lashes, one year in
prison, and a 500,000 rials fine. Especially disturbing about this
case is, that Karimzadeh rights were completely ignored, as, in
violation of the Press Law, he was tried by a revolutionary court,
and after serving his one year prison sentence, the Supreme Court
ruled that the cartoonist had to be "retried." It was
then, that the arbitrarily harsh ten-year sentence was handed out.
(This report was independently obtained. WittyWorld's Iranian
editor has never been involved in reporting on news of political
nature from his country.)
This cartoon resembling
the late Ayatollah got a ten year
conviction for Karimzadeh
UPDATE
WittyWorld publicized the case, Joe Szabo reported
it to a UNESCO sanctioned human rights watch organization and his
article in WittyWorld was the subject of a New York Times
article. After spending a little more than a year in prison, Karimzadeh
was secretly released in late 1994. He keeps a low profile and is
working in Iran under the name of Hassan Karimzadeh.
|
