PARIS, Jan 14: French journalists’ rights organization Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) on Tuesday called for the immediate release of two journalists who were arrested and jailed for having published a 66-year-old cartoon depicting then US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt shaking the hand of a judge bearing close resemblance to Ayatollah Khomeini.

“Once again,” noted RSF, “the regime’s conservatives are victimizing the reformist press to settle political scores. We hope that the reformist politicians will this time go beyond just words and do something to stop these attacks on the media.”

The RSF’s secretary-general also called for lifting the ban on two newspapers shut down after the publication of the 1937 cartoon as well as for the release of 10 journalists.

At the centre of RSF’s condemnation was the recent reprinting by a reformist newspaper, Hayat-é-nau, of a Jan 8, 1937, US newspaper cartoon depicting then-president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and criticizing the pressure he brought to bear on the US supreme court, represented by a bearded, black-robed old man resembling Ayatollah Khomeini.

It was printed alongside an interview with a social science professor about the “social collapse” of Iran.