Iranian MP Ali Motahari has called on the Tehran Prosecutor to announce the grounds and produce the warrant for the media ban on former president Mohammad Khatami.
ISNA reports that in a letter to the Tehran Prosecutor, Motahari writes that according to a number of statements, the media ban on Khatami was not imposed by the National Security Council but rather by an order from the prosecutor’s office.
Motahari urges the prosecutor’s office “to enlighten the public and clarify matters for the editors of publications and news agencies and sites” by identifying “which legal provision has warranted the ban as well as which court issued the order” to ban Mohammad Khatami from media coverage.
On Saturday, President Hassan Rohani told a news conference that the media ban on Mohammad Khatami is by no means warranted by the National Security Council.
On Sunday June 14, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei, the spokesman for the judiciary, said Khatami’s media ban was issued by the prosecutor’s office and any violation of it is subject to prosecution.
Ejei insisted it is within the power of the prosecutor’s office to issue such an order for those regarded “as leaders of sedition”. Khatami, together with MirHosein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who challenged the legitimacy of the 2009 presidential election, have been referred to as “leaders of sedition” by the conservative establishment. Mousavi and Karroubi have been under house arrest since February of 2011, and Khatami who lent his support to their campaigns, has been largely sidelined from the country’s political arena for his link to the mass protests that were triggered by allegations of vote fraud in the 2009 election.
