A death sentence for blogging?

Posted at 3:07 PM on September 21, 2010 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)
Filed under: Politics

I've been reading Roxana Saberi's book this week since she's in town for the Broadcast Journalist series. After the first 20 or so pages detailing her arrest and jailing on spying charges, and details of her interrogation, it's clear living in Iran is like falling into the rabbit hole (Hear her account here).

Saberi was lucky. She got out, partly by confessing (falsely, she says) that she was a spy and agreeing to spy on others. Even so, she was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Hossein Derakhshan, an Iranian-Canadian blogger who was arrested after he returned to Iran nearly two years ago, hasn't been so "lucky". The New York Times says he could be sentenced to death.

Cyrus Farivar, an Iranian-American journalist, reported on Monday that a member of the detained blogger's family "has confirmed to me that he is awaiting a sentence in his trial in Tehran, and that the prosecutor is seeking the death penalty."

He fled Iran in 2000 after his newspaper was shut down. But he returned in 2008 and was arrested a few weeks later.

In 2006, MPR's Jon Gordon talked to him about the power of blogs for Iranians, a power the authorities seem to have successfully crushed.

---

Post a comment

The following HTML tags are allowed in your comments:
+ Bold: <b>Text</b>
+ Italic: <i>Text</i>
+ Link: <a href="http://url" target="_blank">Link</a>
Fields marked with * are required.

Name*:

E-mail Address*:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments*:

Comment Preview appears above this form upon pressing the "preview" button. Edit your comment and press "preview" again, until you are satisfied with your comment.

Your comment may not appear on the blog until several minutes after it was submitted.

• E-mail this page
• Print this page
• Tweet this page
• Share this

Services

• Hourly Newscast
• HD Radio
• iPhone App / Mobile
• E-mail newsletters
• RSS feeds
• Podcasts
• Submit your photos
• Videos
• Weather
• Most e-mailed stories