Imprisonment of Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch

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The imprisonment of Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch in Iran lasted from October 10, 2010 until their release on February 19, 2011. The reporter for Bild am Sonntag , Marcus Hellwig , and the photographer who accompanied him, Jens Koch, were arrested the day after they entered Iran, which took place without official accreditation, was arrested by the security authorities there. They tried to interview the son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in the Azerbaijan region of Iran . She was found guilty of adultery and aiding and abetting the murder of her husband in Iran and sentenced to death by stoning .

Incident and negotiations

Your contact person, who was also supposed to translate the interview over the phone, was the human rights activist Mina Ahadi , who lives in Cologne . On November 16, 2010, Iranian television showed interviews with the arrested German journalists and with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, all three of which admitted errors. It is unclear, however, whether these statements were made voluntarily. The Reuters news agency reported on November 16 that Iran had officially charged the arrested reporters with espionage .

The federal government tried to get the two journalists released through diplomatic channels. On November 19, Foreign Minister Westerwelle called for compliance with international law and appropriate conditions for detention.

On December 27, 2010, in the city of Tabriz , where they were detained, relatives, a sister of the reporter and the mother of the photographer , visited the two reporters for ten hours. The two women had previously met with Iran's Acting Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi and the German Ambassador Bernd Erbel in Tehran .

Two months after his imprisonment , the Swiss journalist Ulrich Schmid complained in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung about the “strange silence of the German media on the case”. In January 2011, German and international publishing associations launched an advertising campaign entitled "Freedom for the two German reporters imprisoned in Iran!"

release

Federal President Christian Wulff asked his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gül for help. Abdullah Gül raised the issue before his state visit to Iran. On September 18, 2011, the Turkish President received Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch, both of whom thanked them for their help. On February 19, 2011, Marcus Hellwig and Jens Koch were released and picked up by Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle with a ready-to-fly machine in Tehran. An original prison sentence of 20 months was converted into a fine of US $ 50,000 each. The Axel Springer Verlag had, according to information provided by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung , apologized to the Iranian judiciary to enter the Reporters without the necessary documents. According to various media reports, the two journalists were only released because Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle agreed to a meeting with Iran's President Mahmud Ahmadinejad . According to research by Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Guido Westerwelle and one of the two journalists concerned, the photographer Jens Koch, had business dealings with each other in the past. According to an NDR television report, Jens Koch photographed the Federal Foreign Minister's wedding exclusively for Axel Springer Verlag.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Handelsblatt.com of November 16, 2010 German reporters admit mistakes on Iranian TV
  2. ↑ Spiegel.de of November 16, 2010 charges of espionage: Tehran shows German journalists on TV
  3. ↑ taz.de of November 16, 2010 Imprisoned espionage suspects: Iran shows Germans on television
  4. ↑ a b nzz.ch of December 13, 2010 Solidarity as a half-hearted compulsory exercise
  5. ↑ nytimes.com of December 28, 2010 Relatives See Detained German Journalists in Iran
  6. ↑ welt.de of January 7, 2011 Campaign for the liberation of reporters imprisoned in Iran
  7. ↑ Presidential Office of the Republic of Turkey: Cumhurbaşkanı Gül, İran'da Tutuklanan Alman Gazetecilerle Görüştü
  8. ↑ Sabah : Abdullah Gül has campaigned for the release ( memento of the original from February 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sabah.de
  9. ↑ handelsblatt.com of February 19, 2011 Federal Foreign Office confirms: Iran releases German reporters
  10. ↑ www.presstv.ir ( Press TV ) of February 19, 2011, Iran sentences German detainees
  11. ↑ Süddeutsche.de of February 21, 2011 Release of the imprisoned reporters: Apologies to Iran
  12. ^ Abendblatt.de of February 21, 2011
  13. ↑ tehrantimes.com of February 22, 2011 German foreign minister meets Ahmadinejad
  14. ↑ ndr.de of February 23, 2011 ( Memento of February 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )