the kicker

Photog Arrested in Iran Speaks Out

June 19, 2009

Photo District News has a fascinating Q&A with a photographer (European) who was arrested on Tuesday while covering the events in Tehran. The photographer’s identity is withheld “for safety reasons”–so take it with the proverbial grain of salt–but the interview provides an illuminating report of the scene on the ground both before and especially after Saturday’s election. (“Cell phone service is very punctual. When rallies begin, it goes down. You know the time of the prayer in Iran because you hear the muezzin calling you to prayer and you know when the time of the rally because your cell phone goes down.”)

The photographer also alleges that violence is being used against the journalists taken into custody by the Tehran police: “We were informed we were not allowed to report any more, and after about one hour we were released. There was no physical violence. Other colleagues have not had such good luck….Some guys from French TV got their cameras smashed. I met a journalist for the Globe and Mail in Toronto who told me he had been beaten.”

Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.