Journalist and Poet Keyvan Mehregan Released

Prominent Iranian journalist and poet Keyvan Mehregan was conditionally released from prison today, May 11, 2016.

Mehregan, who has worked for well-known reformist newspapers including Etemad and Shargh, has been arrested on five separate occasions in recent years in connection with his work as a journalist.

He latest arrest took place on August 26, 2015, when he attempted to renew his passport in Tehran. His wife, Afsaneh Parchekani, later found out he had been taken to Evin Prison to serve a one-year prison sentence he had received four years earlier.

The one-year sentence stemmed from a raid on Shargh newspaper on December 7, 2010, when security forces arrested Mehregan and several other Shargh journalists. Mehregan spent two months in solitary confinement in Evin Prison’s Ward 209 before being released on bail on January 17, 2011.

He was later tried at Branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court presided over by Judge Salavati, who sentenced him to a year in prison and banned him from engaging in any journalism or political activities for five years.

Today, more than five years after his initial arrest, Mehregan has been released, reportedly while he was on temporary leave from prison.

“Tehran’s prosecutor and the judge have agreed to grant him conditional release,” his wife, Afsaneh Parchekani, said, according to the Campaign for Political Prisoners website.

According to article 38 of Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, “Any person sentenced to prison for the first time for the commission of an offence, after half of the sentence is served, may be released conditionally by the order of the court that has issued the final judgment of conviction.”

Read more about Keyvan Mehregan on Journalism Is Not A Crime.