On Monday, Iran prevented filmmaker Mojtaba Mirtahmasb from boarding a flight to Paris in order to attend the Toronto film festival, where his documentary about the detained filmmaker Jafar Panahi will be shown. The film shows a day in the life of Panahi, who is currently serving a six-year prison sentence for a film he made about the unrest in Iran following the disputed election in 2009.
Iranian magazine Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was closed this week for after publishing a satirical front-page image depicting President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad being lectured by his Chief-of-Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. The image, published last month, highlighted Iranian conservatives concerns about Mashaei’s growing political influence, his opponents claim he is attempting to undermine clerical power in Iran. Shahrvand-e-Emrooz was faced restrictions before, it was temporarily closed following civil unrest during and after the 2009 elections.
A journalist claims he was kidnapped and expelled from Azerbaijan. Yafez Hasanov, an Azerbaijani correspondent from Radio Azadliq, part of Radio Free Europe, was in Naxcivan investigating the death of airport technician Turaz Zeynalov, when he was abducted by three men. The suspects — who were driving a vehicle similar to those used by government security officials — told him that if he returned to Naxcivan, it would “cost him.” The men branded Zeynalov, who died after being summoned to the National Security Ministry, a “traitor.” Hasanov was taken to the Iranian border and told to return to Baku via Iran, where RFE is considered an illegal organisation.
Iranian publishers are reeling after measures to save money when printing the Koran backfired this week. In an attempt to make cheaper, mass distribution editions available, the Holy Book was produced and printed in China. But the copies, already on the streets, contain several typing errors, compromising the accuracy of the religious text.
Officials are now considering banning Chinese-printed editions of the Koran in Iran, in order to eliminate erroneous copies. Bookshops who have been supplied the books will have to pay the costs. Rather than acknowledging their errors, officials are focusing on encouraging the purchase of higher priced Iranian editions, which were praised for being more meticulously checked than their Chinese counterparts.
Meticulous checking is something Iranian officials are extremely adept in — it seems that the Iranian editors (read censors) have once again been investing their time and energy on surveillance, as citizens became the target of an internet security scam that enabled snooping on Google users. Google last week confirmed that Internet users in Iran had been scammed by a false certificate verifying site authenticity. Internet users unwittingly revealed their activity to Iranian officials through the usage of the “man-in-the-middle-attack”, which uses a false certificate to obtain the login credentials of users.
The certificate has since been cancelled, but Mozilla has now released an update to Firefox to further protect targeted Internet users with a step by step guide to deleting the DigiNotar CA certificate