Epress.am News from Armenia
A 19-year prison sentenced handed to a Canadian-Iranian credited with starting the blogging movement in Iran is “unacceptable and unjustifiable,” the Canadian government said Tuesday, AFP reports.
Hossein Derakhshan, 35, was convicted in Iran of collaborating with “enemy states and of propaganda against the Islamic system,” the conservative Mashreghnews website reported, quoting a judicial source.
The court also found him guilty of “promoting counterrevolutionary cells and insulting Islamic sanctities.”
“We are deeply concerned about the news of this severe sentence,” Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said. “If true, this is completely unacceptable and unjustifiable.”
“No one should be punished anywhere for simply exercising one’s inherent right to freedom of expression,” he said, adding that “Iran must release him.”
In 2001, Derakhshan sparked a blogging revolution in Iran by posting precise instructions on how to set up Persian-language blogs.
He visited Iran’s arch-foe Israel on his Canadian passport in 2006. He chronicled his experience on his Persian- and English-language blogs, saying he sought to show Israelis and Iranians a different image of each country.
He was arrested after returning to Iran in November 2008.
Derakhshan was handed a 19-and-a-half year sentence and also banned from media activity for five years, the Mashreghnews website reported without clarifying if that was from the time of his eventual release.
Fars news agency quoted another source as confirming the ruling, adding that Derakhshan may appeal.