January 18, 2012

Saeed Malekpour is an Iranian-born web designer from Richmond Hill, Ontario, who has been held in a Tehran prison since October, 2008, on charges of disseminating pornography and "desecrating Islam." This week he lost his final appeal to the Iranian Supreme Court, and has been condemned to death.

Malekpour is a permanent resident of Canada who has awaiting citizenship when he went to visit his ill father in Iran in 2008. He was initially arrested on charges of "insulting and desecrating Islam," accused of creating websites used to post pornography. His family has said that he is a programmer who wrote software that had been used to upload photos on a porn website without Malekpour's knowledge.

The initial death sentence was handed down a year after Malekpour's arrest, after the web designer confessed to charges on an Iranian TV program. That confession resulted in his conviction by a court in Tehran, which handed down the death penalty.

Malekpour has since retracted his confessions, sending a letter from prison that said they were a result of his mistreatment in detention. After his initial arrest, he spent a year in solitary confinement, and had been apparently singled out for abuse at the hands of guards and interrogators.

"Such mistreatment was aimed at forcing me to write what the interrogators were dictating, and to compel me to play a role in front of the camera based on their scenarios."

After his conviction, an international campaign to secure Malekpour's release was launched. In June, 2011, the Supreme Court suspended his sentence as a result of new evidence, and referred the case back to the same branch of the Revolutionary Court and the same judge that had passed the initial conviction.

Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a Toronto-based human rights activist, told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper "There are various discrepancies in Saeed's case file that were supposed to be reviewed and investigated by the revolutionary court, but the judge ignored the discrepancies and reissued the death sentence anyway."

"Saeed is being used as a scapegoat in a string of political games led by the revolutionary guards," she said.

John Baird, Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, criticized the court's decision in a statement released yesterday. "Canada condemns Iran's reported decision to execute Mr. Malekpour," he said. "Sadly, his case is far from the only example of Iran's utter disregard for human life. The regime in Tehran frequently ignores principles like due process for its citizens domestically, and international human rights obligations generally."

Malekpour is not the only Canadian facing execution in Iran. Toronto's Hamid Ghassemi-Shall is in prison and condemned to death for espionage; Canadian citizen Hossein Derakhshan, meanwhile, is serving a 20-year sentence for his role in helping Iranian dissidents create their own blogs.

Links:

Toronto Star

The Guardian

Campaign For Release of Saeed Malekpour

International Freedom of Expression Exchange