Iranian regime announced that they arrested at least 320 Iranians for sharing information on Iran’s Coronavirus epidemic, according to state-run media reports on May 9.
Iran’s Chief of Police said Sunday that 320 individuals had been arrested for what he called “disrupting public opinion” during Iran’s coronavirus epidemic.
“320 people who were sharing false and provocative posts about the COVID-19 pandemic on social media were arrested,” said Hossein Ashtari, the state-run ISNA news agency reported.
Hossein Ashtari said that the regime’s Cyber Police had also identified more than 1,300 websites that “spread rumors”.
“One of the issues that worried and disturbed the public in the first days (of the coronavirus epidemic) was the internet. The Cyber Police dealt decisively with those who spread rumors on the internet,” Ashtari said in a meeting with Seyed Yousef Tabatabai Nejad, the representative of the regime’s Supreme Leader and the head of Friday prayers in Isfahan, central Iran.
The French media watchdog Reporters Without Borders on April 15 condemned the Iranian establishment for the persecution of journalists and citizen-journalists who have published information about the coronavirus epidemic that lacked official approval.
Thousands of people including civil rights activists and journalists have been detained or summoned for questioning after criticizing the Iranian regime’s management of the country’s coronavirus crisis.
Earlier, Hossein Amiri, the deputy head of Iran’s Cyber Police said that their forces had opened 998 cybercrime cases by March 24, only five days after the Persian New Year, and that from these cases, 316 had led to lawsuits.
In late April, two senior officials told state-run TV that Iran’s Cyber Police had arrested thousands of Iranians during the coronavirus epidemic for “spreading rumors”.
