Mansour Iranpour held in Kerman central prison on charges of spreading false news on social media LONDON: An international press freedom organization on Wednesday condemned authorities in Iran for the detention of Iranian journalist Mansour Iranpour, sentenced to one year imprisonment in January. The Committee to Protect Journalists called on Tehran to free the writer as soon as possible. Sherif Mansour, the committee’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, said: “Iranian authorities must immediately release journalist Mansour Iranpour and ensure that he does not face any further retaliation over his work. “The sentencing of a journalist to one year in prison is yet another example of the country’s blatant disregard for freedom of the press.” According to sources, Iranpour, a reporter and columnist at Ashkan News and a contributor to Tabnak, was beaten up in custody and is being denied medical attention. In January, an Iranian court charged him with spreading false news on his social media accounts and through articles he wrote for various state-funded media outlets, including the Tabnak news site. Iranpour began his year-long prison sentence in May after he was summoned by the main judiciary office in Kerman province, arrested, and transferred to Kerman central prison. His recent reporting has been critical of local government officials and alleged financial corruption and embezzlement perpetrated by different government offices in the city. According to media rights group Reporters Without Borders, Iran is considered one of the world’s 10 worst countries in terms of freedom of the press and ranks 178 out of 180 countries on the 2022 World Press Freedom Index. Since the 1979 revolution, at least 1,000 journalists and citizen-journalists have been prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned, and in some cases executed by the Iranian regime. In the last two weeks, several Iranian journalists have been arbitrarily arrested, some without charge. On Sunday, Hossein Razzagh, an Iranian journalist imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin jail, faced new charges over his social media activities. They included, “conspiring and colluding against the regime” for managing a popular room on the Clubhouse social media network, and “propaganda against the system and publishing lies with the intention of disturbing the public mind.”