Ahmad Ghassaban is an Iranian student journalist and managing editor of the student newspaper Sahar at the Amirkabir University of Technology. Tehran authorities arrested him on May 3, 2007, following the distribution of newsletters carrying articles deemed insulting to Islam. He was released from Evin Prison on August 13, 2008, after being granted a conditional release.
The students—all members of the reformist Islamic Student Association—said they were not involved in the publications. They claimed that student members of the Basij—a militia affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard, an elite unit under the supreme leader's control—fraudulently used the names and logos of legitimate student publications as a dirty trick designed to disrupt the group's annual campus election. Immediately following distribution of the newsletters, the Basij attacked the publications and their activist leaders.
The students were subjected to torture during interrogations, according to news reports quoting their families. During their judicial proceedings, defense attorney Mohammad Ali Dadkhah maintained that the prosecution lacked credible evidence and that the students' initial confessions had been extracted under severe duress and torture.
In October, a Tehran Revolutionary Court found all three students guilty of propaganda against the regime and insulting the supreme leader, according to AUTNews. Dadkhah told AUTNews that the court sentenced Ghassaban to 30 months in prison. All three appealed the verdict. Dadkhah added that they still faced charges in criminal court of insulting the Prophet Muhammad and Islamic principles. Although a public criminal court later dropped those separate charges and ordered their release on bail in December 2007, prison officials refused to free them pending the final appeals process, and an appellate court upheld their primary sentences in April 2008.
On August 13, 2008, Ghassaban was conditionally released from Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. He had spent approximately 468 days in detention.