Iran reformist said to be back in solitary confinement

TEHRAN, Iran (Reuters) -- Maverick Iranian editor Akbar Ganji is back in solitary confinement after a recent court hearing, in which he shouted he had been beaten and said he was going on hunger strike, a reformist deputy said on Monday.

"The judiciary is denying political prisoners their basic rights." MP Fatemeh Haqiqat-jou told parliament. "When one prisoner announced a hunger strike on Thursday, he was taken into solitary confinement."

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The outspoken Ganji had spent some seven months in prison, a large part of which was in solitary confinement, before finally being indicted at the Revolutionary Court last week.

He disrupted the start of his trial shouting allegations he had been beaten by guards, then said the court judge was not competent to try him and threatened to name senior officials he said had plotted to kill secularist intellectuals.

Charges against him include acting against state security, spreading propaganda against the Islamic system and insulting religious sanctities by attending a conference on the future of Iran's reforms in Berlin last April.

"If the judiciary had been reformed, popular figures would not be jailed while lying sycophants get promoted," MP Mohammad Abaee Khorasani told the assembly as members denounced various hardline state bodies.

Singled out for criticism were the state broadcast monopoly and Iran's constitutional watchdog body, the Guardian Council -- both dominated by hardliners handpicked by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Khamenei is widely seen to be close to establishment hardliners bitterly opposed to the reformist policies of Iran's moderate President Mohammad Khatami.

"Television has transformed its national status to that of a (political) tool in the hands of one faction," Haqiqat-jou said. "The people are now more increasingly looking to foreign news sources and radio broadcasts."

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