ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has "prosecuted, arrested, imprisoned and in some cases executed" at least 860 journalists, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced on Thursday.
"Confidential until now, the file is a register of all the arrests, imprisonments and executions carried by the Iranian authorities in the Tehran area over four decades," read a statement from RSF.
The data includes court files of journalists and citizen-journalists from 1979-2009.
"The detainee’s professional status is never specified. So the word 'journalist' never appears in the file, which makes it easier for the regime to claim that it is not holding any journalist or, more broadly, any prisoner of conscience," stated the Paris-based watchdog.
RSF described the method as a "state lie" that was used to deceive international human rights bodies.
Forty years of state lies: RSF unveils leaked Iranian justice file : https://t.co/ZZC8GosSLi
— RSF (@RSF_inter) February 7, 2019
“The very existence of this file and its millions of entries show not only the scale of the Iranian regime’s mendacity for years when claiming that its jails were holding no political prisoners or journalists, but also the relentless machinations it used for 40 years to persecute men and women for their opinions or their reporting,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said.
After obtaining the data, RSF worked to cross reference the information with reports of missing journalists, databases of other journalism watchdogs, and NGOs.
A Committee for the Observation and Use of Iranian Justice Data was formed and headed by human rights lawyer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.
The committee also included Monireh Baradarn, a human rights defender and former political prisoner in Iran, Iraj Mesdaghi, a human rights activist and academic, and Rezi Moini, a RSF representative.
RSF is referring the leaked information to the UN high commissioner for human rights.