Victoria man apparently freed after 11 years in Iranian prison

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — A Vancouver woman says the nightmare is finally over for her brother, who has been jailed in Iran for eleven years.

In October, 2008 Victoria resident Saeed Malekpour was visiting his dying father in Iran when he was arrested. He was 33, married, a permanent resident of Canada and pursuing a PhD.

His sister Maryam took up the cause for his freedom and tonight announced via a video on Twitter that he is now in Canada. The video appears to show the two of them at YVR.

https://twitter.com/FreeSaeedM/status/1157470809482383360

While it’s not clear what prompted Iranian officials to finally free Malekpour, Maryam’s tweet acknowledges Canada for its leadership.

A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada confirmed that Malekpour has been freed.

“Canada welcomes the news that Saeed Malekpour has been reunited with his family in Canada. We have advocated for Mr. Malekpour’s release and are pleased that he is now in Canada,” says Stefano Maron. “Due to privacy considerations, we are unable to provide further details on Mr. Malekpour’s case.”

According to Amnesty International, officials there blamed Malekpour’s software program for enabling pictures to be uploaded onto pornographic websites.

“In 2008 the Cyber Crimes Unit of the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was conducting a large operation called Gerdab (Whirlpool) with the goal of cracking down on online activities deemed “immoral” or “un-Islamic”. The unfortunate timing of Saeed’s return to Iran played right into their hands. As a web programmer, he had created an open source program for uploading photos to internet. The Iranian authorities said it was used on Persian pornographic websites. Saeed Malekpour has maintained that the use of this program on other websites was without his knowledge,” they say.

The organization says Malekpour was coerced into confessing and he was not given a fair trial.

“His forced ‘confessions’ were aired on Iranian state television before his trial and verdict. This violated his right to the presumption of innocence and right to be tried by an impartial tribunal. The ‘confessions’ were aired while his family was mourning the recent passing of Saeed’s father. As a result, his mother suffered a heart attack. The pain and the shame was too much to bear. Saeed Malekpour’s televised ‘confessions’ were subsequently used as “evidence” to later secure his conviction in court.

Amnesty International published an exerpt from a 2010 letter from Malekpour describing his ordeal–which he says included solitary confinement, physical and mental torture.

“The physical torture was nothing compared to the psychological torments. I endured long solitary confinement without phone calls or the possibility of visiting my loved ones, constant threats to arrest and torture my wife and family if I did not co-operate, threats to kill me. They also gave me false news that my wife had been arrested. My mental health was severely threatened. I had no access to any books or journals in the solitary cells, and at times, I would not speak to anybody for days,” the letter says.

Malekpour was initially sentenced to death for “spreading corruption on earth.” In 2012 his death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.