YEMEN Press Agency

Twitter suspends accounts of Iranian state media

SANAA, July 21 (YPA) – Twitter on Saturday announced that it has suspended the accounts of a number of Iranian State media under the pretext of “targeting the oppressed Baha’i minority in the Islamic Republic.”

Since Friday, a letter in English that wrote that “the account has been suspended appeared on the pages of the official Iranian news agency “IRNA” and the club of young journalists and two accounts of the news agency “Mehr” close to the moderate conservatives, and the account of the political commentator, Aliakbar Raefipoo.

A Twitter official justified that the suspension of these accounts is the due to systematically targeting the Baha’i community by these media.

Twitter and Facebook are officially banned in Iran, but a number of officials have accounts on them and Iranians can access these sites using “virtual private networks” (VBN).

Mehr News Agency reported that its account had been suspended for publishing an article the British oil tanker Stena Impero in the Strait of Hormuz.

E.M