TEHRAN — An Iranian newspaper editor who defied a national reporting ban on former president Mohammad Khatami hit back at threats of prosecution Wednesday, saying that such restrictions were unconstitutional.
Mahmoud Doaei, managing editor of the Ettelaat daily, was indicted on Tuesday by a media court for using a picture of Khatami, a two-term (1997-2005) reformist president, in Saturday's edition of the paper.
Ettelaat also carried excerpts of an interview which Khatami gave to Lebanon's As-Safir newspaper.
The ruling on Khatami, issued by Tehran's prosecutor, amounts to a domestic media blackout and is linked to Iran's disputed presidential vote in 2009 in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected.
Khatami, whose tenure was marked by unsuccessful attempts to open up Iran to the West, was among prominent figures who said the ballot was fraudulent and refused to recognize Ahmadinejad's victory.
Despite the indictment Doaei used a front page editorial to write an open letter to Iranian President Hassan Rohani suggesting that officials behind "subjective" directives, rather than editors, should be prosecuted.
"Ettelaat daily won't accept it," Doaei wrote, saying the media ban was not based on law or regulations and calling on Rohani, a self-declared moderate, to tell Iran's judiciary to "stop this unconstitutional procedure".
"We will continue our rational process of reporting on the gentle, popular and distinguished character of the revolution," he said of Khatami, calling him an "old friend" of Imam Khomeini, Iran's first supreme leader.
Publication of the editorial was swiftly followed by the judiciary saying Doaei, an official media representative of current supreme leader Ali Khamenei, had given a commitment not to breach the order. — AFP
