Reuters/Dubai

Iranian authorities arrested two prominent journalists yesterday as the head of the judiciary dismissed international condemnation of what appears to be a crackdown on writers and artists.
Isa Saharkhiz, a well-known independent journalist, was arrested by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) on charges of “insulting the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and propaganda against the regime”, his son Mehdi said in a telephone interview from the United States.
Ehsan Mazandarani, managing director of the Farikhtegan newspaper, was arrested on security charges, the Tasnim news agency, which is linked to the IRGC, said. Staff at the paper confirmed the arrest.
The IRGC answers directly to Khamenei and is not accountable to the government. It works with the conservative judiciary to counter perceived internal threats to the Islamic Republic.
The arrests came after two Iranian poets and a filmmaker were sentenced to long prison terms and lashes last month on charges including “insulting sanctities and propaganda against the state”.
Filmmaker Keywan Karimi was sentenced to six years in prison and 223 lashes, and poets Fatemeh Ekhtesari and Mehdi Mousavi were handed 11.5 years and nine years in prison respectively, and 99 lashes each.
On Sunday, the PEN American Center, an organisation advocating on behalf of writers persecuted because of their work, wrote to Khamenei asking him to nullify the sentences against the poets.
“We are deeply concerned by the inhumane sentences ... for the simple act of expressing themselves by creating art. The act of writing poetry is no crime,” read the petition, signed by 116 poets and writers, on PEN’s website.
Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary, dismissed allegations of human rights abuses in the country yesterday, and was quoted by state news agency Irna as saying that “Tehran will never surrender to the human rights as interpreted by the West”.
IRGC forces arrested Saharkhiz in his home early in the morning and confiscated his electronic equipment, his son said, adding that he had already begun a hunger strike.
The veteran journalist, who served as deputy culture minister under the reformist president Mohamed Khatami, was previously arrested in 2009, shortly after widespread reformist protests gripped Tehran, and jailed for four years.