Editor’s note: Journalist Mohammad Pour Abdollah was released from Ghezel Hesar Prison in northern Iran on August 27, 2011, after serving approximately two and a half years in detention and prison. He was released following a pardon granted ahead of the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
In December 2009, a Revolutionary Court convicted Mohammad Pour Abdollah, a Tehran university student and a blogger, on charges of “illegal congregation, actions against national security, and propagating against the Islamic Republic of Iran,” according to the BBC Persian service website. Pour Abdollah’s original six-year sentence was reduced to three years, the Human Rights Activists News Agency reported in April.
Several news websites said he had been tortured while in custody at Ghezel Hesar Prison, a facility that houses hardened criminals. Since his detention, Pour Abdollah’s blog has been disabled; only his last post can be accessed, on another writer’s blog. In that post, Pour Abdollah writes critically about the political, social, and economic conditions in Iran and elsewhere.