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Iranian Blogger Expected At Women's World Cup Reported Missing


Iranian actress and blogger Pegah Ahangarani
Iranian actress and blogger Pegah Ahangarani
Iranian actress and blogger Pegah Ahangarani is missing amid concerns she may have been arrested in Tehran, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports.

Ahangarani was scheduled to travel to Germany on July 4 to blog about the 2011 women's soccer World Cup for Deutsche Welle.

Farhad Payar, an independent journalist who also works with Deutsche Welle, told Radio Farda on July 13 that Ahangarani was summoned to Iran's Intelligence Ministry the day before her planned departure and warned she would be arrested if she went to the airport.

Payar added that Ahangarani has been missing for the past few days and no one has heard from her. He said that after Ahangarani was threatened she would not go anywhere alone.

Ahangarani had visited Germany in 2009 to blog from the Berlin International Film Festival (Berlinale) for Deutsche Welle.

As a member of opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Musavi's election campaign team during the disputed June 2009 presidential election, she was summoned and interrogated during the postelection unrest.

A second Iranian woman sports photojournalist, Maryam Majd, who was scheduled to travel to Duesseldorf, Germany on June 17 to report on the women's soccer World Cup, was arrested just before her trip.

Majd, a member of a campaign that supports Iranian women being allowed to attend men's soccer games, is still in custody but it is not known on what charges she is being held.

Read more in Persian here
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