News Agencies – January 19, 2011
Iran’s Supreme Court has reinstated a death sentence against an Iranian resident of Canada who had been accused of running a pornographic website, a lawyer working on the case. The death sentence meted out to Saeed Malekpour was reinstated by the court, after it had reportedly been annulled in June. Malekpour, a 36-year-old computer programmer, was sentenced to death in December 2010 after being found guilty of “designing and moderating adult content websites,” “agitation against the regime,” and “insulting the sanctity of Islam,” according to his supporters.
The Canadian government protested the verdict, which the Supreme Court then reportedly annulled in June 2011. Malekpour’s supporters say he developed a program that allows photographs to be posted to the Internet, which was used without his knowledge for the creation of porn sites. A resident of Canada since 2004, Malekpour was arrested in Iran in 2008 while visiting his dying father.
