Kuohyar Goudarzi, an Iranian journalist and human rights activist, has been sentenced to five years in jail and exile to Zabol.
The Human Rights Reporters Committee reports that the sentence was issued on March 7 at the Revolutionary court.
Goudarzi was arrested last July in Tehran and held in solitary confinement for more than two months. After three months, he was finally allowed to to contact his family by phone.
Goudarzi had also been arrested after the controversial presidential elections of 2009 that led to widespread street demonstrations. He was charged with propaganda activities against the regime for his collaboration with the Human Rights Reporters Committee and the collecting and publishing of anti-regime news and relaying the news to terrorist elements based outside of Iran. He was also charged for “giving interviews to foreign media and publishing his articles on the internet.”
Goudarzi is the winner of the 2010 John Aubuchon Press Freedom award.
His mother, Parvin Mokhtare, who championed his cause and spoke to the media about her son’s arrest, was arrested one day after her son’s arrest and is now being held in Kerman Prison.
Mokhtare was sentenced to 23 months in jail, which was turned into a suspended sentence in the appellate court.
She stood trial once more in Kerman last week, and her release was made conditional on the payment of a 5.4-million-toumans fine.
