Ahmadinejad aide on leave from Iran jail

Top presidential aide Ali Akbar Javanfekr has been given a short leave from Tehran's notorious Evin prison for medical treatment, government-run Iran newspaper reported on Thursday. Javanfekr "was released at midnight ... his four-day release is for (the purpose) of medical treatment, after which he is committed to return to prison," the daily said in a short report. It did not elaborate. Javanfekr, who heads the paper and the official IRNA news agency, was arrested in September and sent to Evin for six months after being convicted of publishing material offensive to Islamic codes and public morality. He told the Fars news agency that he would use the leave to recover so "he could manage the three months remaining of his sentence," adding that his priority was getting "medical treatment." No details about his medical condition were given. "Going on (prison) leave is a normal phenomenon for all prisoners ... and it could be because of illness," his lawyer Ghahreman Shojaei told the ISNA news agency. Javanfekr has long been targeted by hardline judges and ultra-conservative figures who see him and the president as trying to undermine religious principles. His arrest, at the time Ahmadinejad was delivering a speech at the annual UN General Assembly in New York, sparked infighting in the regime. In October, Ahmadinejad planned a visit to Evin, where most of the inmates are political prisoners, to meet Javanfekr. But the judiciary, controlled by hardliners close to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, denied the president access to the prison.