Iran’s highest court, supreme court, has upheld the death sentence for a web programmer (Saeed Malekpour ) who developed software for uploading photos on porn sites.
Saeed Malekpour was arrested in October 2008 and taken to a prison in Tehran. He was put in solitary confinement for more than one year without even access to his lawyer nor any charges being conferred on him. A year later, Saeed appeared in a state TV programme confessing to all many crimes related the porn site charges. He was later convicted by a court in Tehran on the basis of his TV confessions and handed down death penalty.
Saeed later sent out a letter to the court from prison retracting every confession he made saying they were made under duress. Saeed is a permanent resident of Canada and is a programmer. He also said that his software was used by porn sites without his knowledge.
Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a human rights activist based in Toronto spoke to The Guardian about Saeed’s case:
“Saeed is in imminent danger of execution. He has never been provided with a fair trial at any point during this horrific and twisted ordeal. There are various discrepancies in Saeed’s case file that were supposed to be reviewed and investigated by the revolutionary court, but the judge ignored the discrepancies and reissued the death sentence anyway. Saeed is being used as a scapegoat in a string of political games led by the revolutionary guards.”
In his letter, Saeed said that proportions of his confessions had been “extracted under pressure, physical and psychological torture.” He also accused the interrogators of torturing him to confess to the charges.
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