On June 2, 2005, Saminejad, a 25-year-old blogger, was sentenced to two years in prison for “insulting the supreme leader.” He has not been allowed to appeal the ruling and the specifics of the case have not been disclosed. The prosecution is widely believed to be the result of his Web logs, which were critical of the Iranian government. He is in Gohar Dashat prison outside Tehran.
Saminejad was jailed in February, when Tehran’s chief prosecutor summoned him for a court hearing. He had been detained previously, in November 2004, after reporting the arrests of three fellow bloggers on his Web site, and released in January 2005.
He was also charged with “insulting the prophets,” which is punishable by death, but a Tehran court cleared him of that count in June.