Iranian journalist Keyvan Samimi, imprisoned since December 2020, was released on Thursday, his family told AFP.
Samimi, 74, had been sentenced to three years in prison for “plotting against national security.”
“Samimi, who had been transferred last year to Semnan prison,” located nearly 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Tehran, “was released this afternoon,” his family said.
The journalist had been granted permission to leave prison on medical grounds in February 2022.
But he returned to prison in May after being suspected of carrying out activities against national security, Iran’s Mehr news agency said.
In December, Samimi sent a message from his cell in support of the protest movement that started in Iran since the September 16 death of Mahsa Amini.
The 22-year-old Iranian Kurd died in the custody of the morality police in Tehran after her arrest for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic’s dress code for women.
Samimi has spent time behind bars before and after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
According to an updated report, Iranian journalist Keyvan Samimi reportedly remains in prison despite a weekend report in reformist media suggesting he had been released from Semnan Prison, where he has been serving a two-year sentence for his presence at a protest rally in 2019.
AFP quoted unnamed family on January 2 rejecting a report a day earlier in the Sharq daily saying the 73-year-old member of the Religious Nationalists Council had been freed.
Samimi was imprisoned at Tehran’s Evin prison in 2021 to serve a two-year sentence after being found guilty of “assembly and collusion against the state” relating to his attendance of a protest rally in front of parliament marking May Day in 2019.
He was temporarily released in February due to poor health but was sent to Semnan just three months later after he was handed new charges of harming national security.
In December, Samimi reportedly issued a message from prison supporting the ongoing nationwide protests that erupted following the September death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she allegedly wore the mandated head scarf improperly.
Samimi is a former editor in chief of the Nameh and Iran Farda magazines and is thought to be the oldest journalist jailed in Iran.
