Wednesday Nov. 9,2005
Gooya news online reporting :

Italian newspaper "La Repubblica" in an interview with "Emad Baghi" - Nov. 7,2005

" Emadodin Baghi" established an association in defense of prisoners in Iran and he is a journalist and at one time was working for seven newspaper and was also editor of several newspaper. In 2004 he recieved an international bravery award on civil right from " Parksion foundation " but when he was about to leave for New York to recieve tha award , he was banned to leave the country in the airport and his passport was confiscated by the authority . Emad spent three years in prison.

Here is a part of his interview about the prison situation in Iran :
Question: How is the present prison situation ? There are talks about Ganji that after ending his hunger strike he was returned to prison and now he is in quarentine ?
At present except 130,000 ordinary prisoners from 70 million population of Iran , we have two groupe of political prisoners. The number of prisoner of conscience and press related prisoners are between 40-50 people and the number of political prisoner related or are allegedly related to armed groupe as far as we identified are about 200-300 people. they are accused of murdering one or several people .the prison condition for these prisoners are much worse than those who's name have been published in western media. In our openion the second groupe even if commited crime their rights must be followed and none of the first groupe of prisoners deserve to be in prison and must be released immediately and they have more chance to be released by the influence of personalities from non-governmental organizations than the intervention of foriegn government because this might bring negative result.........

Translated by IRAN WATCH CANADA

Link to this news in Farsi:
http://raha.gooya.name/politics/archives/038987.php#more
Link to Ifex:
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/221/
Link to RSF :
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=15304
Link to Pen Canada:
www.pencanada.ca