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Alert

Arrests continue, one journalist released

Reporters Without Borders condemns the arrest of Mohamed Ali Dadkhah, a lawyer who represents many journalists and cyber-dissidents and who, together with Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, helped to set up the Human Rights Defenders Centre. He was arrested on 8 July 2009 at his Tehran office along with several colleagues. There has been no word of them since then.

Meanwhile, Mohammad Reza Yazdan Panah, a journalist who writes for the pro-reform newspapers "Shargh", "Kargozaran" (closed by the authorities in 2008), "Hammihan" and "Farhikhtegan" and who keeps a blog ( http://booyekhaak.blogfa.com/ ), was arrested at his Tehran home on 7 July and was taken to an unknown location.

"The authorities claim that they have released most of the people who were arrested during the opposition demonstrations but we can see that the arrests are continuing," Reporters Without Borders said.

Mostafa Ghavnlo Ghajar, a journalist who was arrested at his home at midnight on 22 June, was released on 6 July. He writes for various newspapers, acts as Radio Goftogo's "foreign media" specialist and keeps a blog ( http://www.ghajar.ir/ ).

According to the Reporters Without Borders tally, a total of 35 journalists and bloggers are currently in prison in Iran.