On Sunday, a special press court in Iran convicted Thomson Reuters’ Tehran bureau chief Parisa Hafezi of propaganda against the Islamic Republic for a video story in February that mistakenly described a group of female martial arts students as ninja “assassins”, reports said. A court sentence is expected within a week.

After the martial arts club lodged a complaint, Reuters had changed the headline from “Thousands of female Ninjas train as Iran’s assassins” to “Three thousand women Ninjas train in Iran,” and issued an official apology. Despite the correction, the Reuters bureau was suspended in March and most of its staff moved to Dubai. Hafezi, an Iranian national, was not allowed to leave the country.

IPI Deputy Director Anthony Mills said: “Mistakes are a not a reason to limit press freedom. Reuters has issued a correction and apologised for the mistaken headline. Given these circumstances, we hope that the case against Parisa Hafezi will be dropped, and that the rest of her team at Reuters will soon be able to return to report on Iran freely and from within the country.”

Reuters spokeswoman Barb Burg was quoted as saying: “We understand that the jury has stated its view and we now await the court’s ruling. We do not intend to comment further until a decision is issued.”

Iran’s press court was only created in February 2011 amid fears of an intensifying campaign against the media. According to Abbas Zagholi, the head of Iran’s Government Employees Court, the new court was deemed necessary to target “special media crimes” and deal with “developments in mass media.”