Elham Afroutan

Elham Afroutan is an Iranian journalist.

She was arrested following publication of a short article in ‘’Civilization of Hormozgan’’ newspaper. The article entitled ‘’Let’s make the fight against AIDS public: what to do with regime AIDS ?’’ has been taken from writings of F.M. Sokhan, an Iranian blogger and satirist in exile.

According to the laws in Iran, court can only file a case against the responsible owner of the newspaper and not the staff and writers. The owner of the newspaper, is Ali Dirbaz, an Iranian MP from fundamentalist party. He called for the execution of Elham Afroutan, the 19-year-old journalist. After the publication of the newspaper, there were demonstrations by people in Hormozgan demanding for execution of agents responsible for the case.

F.M. Sokhan who was the writer of the article accepted the full responsibility of the article asking the regime to release Elham Afroutan.

In February 2006, rumors were distributed about Elham Afroutan being in coma due to torture. [http://1384.g00ya.com/politics/archives/043799.php] A few days later, Shahryar Moshiri, an MP of Hormozgan, announced that Elham Afroutan "committed suicide" twice during last few days and that she is "psychologically sick". [http://roozonline.com/01newsstory/014064.shtml]

See also

* Zahra Kazemi
* Erfan Qaneifard

External links

* [http://www.amnestyinternational.be/doc/article7107.html IRAN: Elham Afroutan and up to six other journalists]
* [http://roozonline.com/11english/013911.shtml Controversial Humor Article Creates Commotion]
* [http://www.fmsokhan.com/ FM Sokhan’s Persian weblog ]
* [http://en.nufdi.org/News/News_mainf.cfm?Newsha=879 Members of PEN American Center: letter to supreme leader of Iran]