Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon has pressed his Iranian counterpart to release a Canadian journalist detained without charge during Tehran's crackdown on protests over the country's presidential election.

Maziar Bahari, a Canadian journalist working for Newsweek, has been detained in Iran without charge. (CBC)Cannon met with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Tuesday while attending the Friends of Democratic Pakistan Conference in Turkey, Cannon's spokeswoman Catherine Loubier said Wednesday in a release.

During the meeting, Cannon repeated Canada’s "grave concern over Iran’s disrespect for basic human rights" and the "unacceptable treatment and continued unjustified detention" of Maziar Bahari, Loubier said.

Canada has previously called for Bahari's release and has demanded immediate consular access, full legal rights, his protection and clarification of the allegations against him, she said.

On June 21, Bahari was taken by a group of men believed to be security officials from the Tehran apartment he shares with his mother.

Bahari is originally from Tehran but moved to Canada in 1988 and completed a degree at Concordia University in Montreal. He keeps a home in Toronto and has been working in Iran for Newsweek for more than a decade, the magazine said.

Since Iran's June 12 presidential election, the government has cracked down on foreign media — expelling and detaining some journalists and forbidding coverage of first-hand reporting, including images and witness accounts, from the streets of Tehran.