PARIS, April 21: The editor of an Iranian weekly has been sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment and 74 lashes for having “insulted the leaders of the regime” and for “publishing lies”.

Reporters sans Frontieres, the Paris-based international journalists’ rights organization, has protested the action against Mr Ali-Hamed Iman and the periodical, Chams-i-Tabriz. in a letter to the head of the Iranian judicial branch, Ayatollah Shahrudi.

“We ask you to reverse this sentence along with all the suspension orders issued against newspapers since April 2000,” asks RSF secretary-general Robert Menard in the letter.

The RSF says that according to information received from its local correspondents, a court in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz decided to ban the regional newspaper on April 16, at which time it also found its editor, Mr Ali-Hamed Iman, guilty of 15 offences.

He has 20 days to appeal the verdict.