posted March 13, 2001 10:03               

In her letter Sunday, Parvin Bakhtiari-Nejad said that judicial authorities had detained her husband without a warrant last month and that she had not been allowed to contact him.

"My children and I have not even been allowed to speak to him by phone. What am I to tell my three-year-old child who keeps asking about his father?" she said.

She noted Reza Alijani has been a true lover of the Islamic Republic.

Late last month, Alijani, editor of the banned Iran-e Farda journal which is a mouthpiece of a banned but somewhat tolerated Iran's Freedom Movement was arrested upon an order of the Islamic Revolution Court.

Before being ordered closed, Iran-e Farda was headed by Ezzatollah Sahabi, the leader of Iran Freedom Movement. Sahabi is slapped with a four-year jail term since last December after delivering a speech at a controversial
Heinrich Beol conference in Berlin.

The revolutionary court in January ordered the arrest of another pro-reform columnist of Iran-e Farda, Hoda Saber, who is still in jail.