Saeed Malekpour has been held in Evin Prison for two years, where he has been tortured and forced to confess. Accused of working on a pornography website, he was originally given a death sentence, later changed to life imprisonment after the international community intervened.
Name: Saeed Malekpour
Born: 1975, Iran
Career: Web designer and software developer.
Charges: Designing and operating pornography sites, propaganda against the regime, blasphemy, insulting the Supreme Leader, insulting the president, links to groups opposed to the Islamic Republic and “spreading corruption on earth.”
The Cyber Unit of the Revolutionary Guards arrested Saeed Malekpour, a metallurgical engineer with permanent residency in Canada, in October 2008. He was severely assaulted before being taken to Evin Prison.
A website affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards reported that a man named Saeed Malekpour, who operated one of the biggest pornographic and anti-religious websites under the pseudonym Siavosh Hossein Khani, had been arrested.
He spent 320 days in solitary confinement, enduring mental and physical torture, and was forced to confess on television, admitting that he was responsible for designing and operating a Persian-language pornography site with financial backing from the United States.
He later retracted his confession in a letter sent from prison. “A large portion of my confession was extracted under pressure, which included physical and psychological torture, threats to myself and my family, and false promises for my immediate release if I gave a false confession,” his letter said.
"There was one time in October 2008 that the interrogators stripped me while I was blindfolded and threatened to rape me with a bottle of water,” he wrote. "While I remained blindfolded and handcuffed, several individuals hit me with cables and batons and punched me. At times, they would flog me. This mistreatment was aimed at forcing me to write what the interrogators wanted, and to compel me to play a specific role in front of the camera."
In 2005, Malekpour had gone to Canada to continue his education. Before he started the academic year, he went to Iran to visit his family, and particularly his father, who was terminally ill. Malekpour’s TV confession was broadcast three days after his father died.
His trial was held at Branch 28 of the Revolutionary Court presided over by Judge Moghisei, who sentenced him to be hanged. In January 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the sentence. Following the news, thousands of signatories—among them students, Western officials, human rights activists and human rights organizations—demanded that the sentence be annulled.
His case stayed in limbo for 17 months but after continued international pressure, particularly from within Canada, the Supreme Court changed his death sentence to life imprisonment. His lawyer told the media that he had repented and this was why the court had altered the sentence.
Malekpour maintained throughout his detention that the photo uploading software he had developed had been used in connection with a pornography website without his knowledge. Fifty of his cellmates wrote a letter testifying to his moral character and said that torture marks to force him to confess were still visible on his body.
In June 2014, having been in Cell Block 2A at Evin Prison for two years, he was transferred to the community ward. He has never been granted a furlough.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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