on the British broadcaster. Some have been pressured to spy on Britain.
Relatives and friends of about 10 of the channel’s Iranian employees who work in the United Kingdom have been harassed by the Iranian authorities, Peter Horrocks, the head of global news at the BBC, said last Thursday.
“Passports have been confiscated, homes searched and threats made. The relatives have been told to tell the BBC staff to stop appearing on air, to return to Iran, or to secretly provide information on the BBC to the Iranian authorities,” he wrote on a BBC blog.
“Many of our Iranian employees who live in London are fearful to return to their country because of the regime’s attacks on the BBC. But although those journalists are beyond the direct reach of their government, they are now subject to a new underhand tactic,” he said.
Iran has always condemned the BBC. But the harshness was ratcheted up about two years ago after the BBC started full-time television broadcasts into Iran in Farsi. Many Iranians still watch the BBC’s programming on illegal satellite dishes. In fact, many think the regime’s constant harangues against the BBC help build up its listenership.
Last month, the regime detained six Iranian documentary filmmakers, accusing them of spying for the BBC.
The BBC said it had only aired documentaries by those filmmakers; it said the documentaries had previously been screened internationally and the BBC had not commissioned them and did not have any of the six filmmakers on the BBC payroll.
Iran has now released two of the six after 22 days in jail. The Iranian Documentary Makers Association announced that Nasser Safarian and Mohsen Sahnazdar were released Sunday.
The Iranian Student’s News Agency (ISNA) said Saffarian paid bail of 2 billion rials, or $190,000.
Mojtaba Mir-Tahmasb, Katayoon Shahbi, Hadi Afarideh and Shahram Bazdar remain in custody since September 17.