Iran's 'Blogfather' Sentenced to Long Prison Term

(Sept. 29) -- Iran sentenced a Canadian-Iranian blogger known as the Blogfather to 19 and a half years in prison and reportedly told his family they should be happy he was not sentenced to death.

Hossein Derakhshan, 35, was convicted for "cooperation with hostile states, propagating against the regime, propagation in favor of anti-revolutionary groups, insulting sanctities, and implementation and management of obscene websites," according to the conservative news site Mashreqhnews.ir, as translated by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

Derakhshan's former wife, Marjan Alemi, called the sentence "a tragedy," telling Canadian television CTV that she believed the regime had signaled a death penalty was imminent "so that when they give out 19 years, his family was actually happy."

"Such a long jail term has never before been imposed on a blogger in Iran and is indicative of a desire to make an example out of Derakhshan," the advocacy organization Reporters without Borders said in a statement.

That judgment came amid reports that Isa Saharkhiz, 56, a prominent opposition journalist, was sentenced earlier this week to three years in prison, according to The New York Times: two years for insulting Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and another one for promulgating propaganda against the Iranian regime. At his trial earlier this summer, Saharkhiz appeared in leg irons and called for Khamenei's prosecution for countenancing what he said was the continued torture of political prisoners.

Saharkhiz's case grew out of Iran's disputed presidential election in June 2009, which led to large street protests and bloody conflicts between protesters and government security forces. According to Amnesty International, some 70 journalists are in Iranian prisons, many of them awaiting trial.

Derakhshan is something of a special case. Born in Iran, he went to college in Canada and later became a Canadian citizen. Under the name "Hoder," he became a key figure in Iran's active blogging scene, which some say he inspired by posting blogging instructions in Farsi 10 years ago, earning himself the Blogfather moniker.

Derakhshan remained a vocal advocate of free expression, but also became a supporter of the policies of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. According to Alemi, he was invited to return to Iran by an organization close to the president in 2008, but was arrested by the Revolutionary Guards once he got there and has been detained in Tehran's Evin Prison ever since. Reporters Without Borders calls him "a collateral victim of infighting between the Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian intelligence services."

Jeff Jarvis, a prominent U.S. blogger and new-media advocate, wrote that he was "personally heartbroken" by the sentence. "No matter what his opinions were or what opinions you may have had about him, that doesn't matter now. We should all be outraged," he wrote.

In a statement, Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon said Canada "was deeply concerned by reports of this severe sentence against Mr. Derakhshan," which its officials were still seeking to confirm. Cannon said Derakhshan's situation "is complicated by his dual nationality, which is not recognized by the Iranian authorities. Iran must release him and other dual nationals who have been unjustly detained."