Facebook Satirist Exiled after Serving Prison Sentence

Soheil Babadi, a computer engineer who has served a prison sentence for writing satirical pieces on Facebook, has been sent into exile after serving his prison sentence, some of it in solitary confinement. 

According to The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, authorities transferred Babadi from Rajaei Shahr Prison to the Security Police Detention Center in Karaj near Tehran. On Saturday, January 28, they sent him into exile to the town of Bashagard in the southeastern province of Hormozgan. Read more from the International Campaign. (Persian link). 

Babadi, 39, was arrested on May 22, 2012. “In May 2011 I posted 10 short pieces of satire on a Facebook page called the ‘Campaign to Remind Shiites about Imam Naghi’ without using any insulting words,” he wrote in a letter from prison. “A year later I was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards’ Intelligence Organization without a warrant and held in Ward 2-A, the Guards’ exclusive detention center, and beaten and interrogated for 24 hours.”

The satirist reported that an official from Branch 3 of the Security Court read the charges against him. They included “insulting the Prophet Mohammad,” “insulting the sacred,” “assembly and collusion,” “insulting the supreme leader,” “propaganda against the state,” “membership to a group planning to overthrow the state” and acting “against national security.” In his letter, Babadi outlines these charges — “all for writing 10 jokes on Facebook.”

The lower Revolutionary Court sentenced Babadi to five-and-a-half years in prison, 74 lashes and two years in exile. In a second trial in September 2015, Judge Mohammad Moghiseh of Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced Babadi to an additional seven years in prison for “assembly and collusion against national security” and “insulting the supreme leader.” The appeals court, however, cleared him of the latter charges.

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Soheil Babadi should have been released from prison in June 2015 in accordance with Iranian laws, but judiciary officials refused. They did not give a reason for keeping him detained. 

“I was interrogated while blindfolded in the corner of a room,” he wrote in his letter. During interrogations Babadi was beaten repeatedly to extract confessions from him. “The agent wanted me to confess to the charges against me, and when I refused he severely beat me. I was constantly under psychological pressure as the agents probed into my personal life and tried to accuse me of sexual relations with friends and relatives, even with my sister-in-law, and even of homosexual relations with one of my friends, Mostafa. But they didn’t succeed and kept me in solitary confinement for 225 days.”