UN troubled by Iran 'clampdown' on freedom, rights

GENEVA (AP) -- The U.N. human rights office says it is deeply worried that Iran is cracking down on human rights activists, lawyers and journalists.

Rupert Colville, spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, says several recent arrests and detentions in Iran are evidence of a "further severe clampdown."

Colville told reporters Tuesday in Geneva that his office is troubled by the six-month sentence handed last month to the top press adviser to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for publishing material deemed insulting to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Colville also cited a special media court's finding last month that the Tehran bureau chief of the Thomson Reuters news agency was guilty of "spreading lies" against the Islamic system.