WASHINGTON (AP) – The Washington Post is hitting back at Iran’s allegation that a jailed journalist wrote a letter to President Barack Obama.
Executive editor Martin Baron says in a statement that Post reporter Jason Rezaian actually filled out an online job application, not a personal letter to Obama, and never worked for the administration. Rezaian is on trial in Tehran on espionage charges.
Baron says shortly after the 2008 election and three years before he worked for the Post, Rezaian applied online for a job in the incoming administration. Baron says: “He never wrote directly to President Obama.”
Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency says a Farsi translation of what it said was the letter was read aloud, including this sentence: “In Iran, I’m in contact with simple laborers to influential mullahs.”