Source:

September 21, 2010

The sister of jailed Iranian journalist and human rights activist Abdolreza Tajik is reported to have been charged with “spreading lies” and “assembly, conspiracy, and disseminating propaganda against the Islamic Republic regime,” RFE/RL’s Radio Farda reports.

Parvin Tajik was summoned on September 18 to Tehran’s Evin prison and notified of the charges brought against her, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. She has been released on bail.

Abdolreza Tajik, a member of the Tehran-based Defenders of Human Rights Center (DHRC), was arrested on June 12 for the third time since the disputed Iranian presidential election in June 2009. Since then Parvin Tajik has repeatedly given interviews to the media, expressing concern over her brother’s condition.

In late July, Tajik’s family wrote an open letter to the Iranian judiciary saying that Abdolreza had been “dishonored” in jail. Parvin Tajik told Radio Farda at the time that during a prison visit, her brother had told her he had been “dishonored” in the presence of a deputy prosecutor on the first night of his arrest.

Tajik’s lawyer, Mohammad Sharif, told Radio Farda then that in Iranian judicial cases “being dishonored” is interpreted as “being sexually or physically assaulted.”

Tajik was first taken into custody shortly after the election, but released after 46 days in Evin prison. He was rearrested on December 29.