Editor’s note: Journalist Mazdak Ali Nazari was released from Evin Prison in Tehran on August 15, 2012, after serving approximately 10 months. He was released under a state amnesty.
Nazari was sentenced in December 2010 by Branch 15 of Tehran’s Revolutionary Court to three years and four months in prison, 20 lashes, and a fine. The charges reportedly included propaganda against the regime, insulting the Supreme Leader, and offenses related to participation in the 2009 post-election protests and other security-related activities.
Mazdak Ali Nazari, who won the Iranian Journalists Association's Best Journalist Award in 2007, was arrested at his home sometime in the second week of November, according to news accounts and human rights groups.
Nazari was editor of Nasim Haraz Monthly, a cultural magazine, and editor-in-chief of Journalism for Peace, a critical Web site focusing on human rights. He is also author of the blog Zemzemeh Haye Divaneh. Nazari told his family about his arrest in a brief telephone call, but was unable to relay details, including his whereabouts, according to Rooz Online, a Farsi- and English-language reformist news Web site.
Nazari had also worked for Etemad e Melli, the newspaper owned by defeated presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi.