Saeed Malekpour’s Death Sentence Commuted to Life Because “He Repented”

Saeed Malekpour, a web developer who had previously been sentenced to death for blasphemy, was sentenced to life in prison after he repented at the Supreme Court. Malekpour’s lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaee, told ISNA News Agency on Monday, August 26, that after his death sentence was upheld at the Supreme Court, he repented and showed remorse, and therefore his sentence was reduced to life in prison.

The 37-year old prisoner’s lawyer told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that Saeed Malekpour did not deserve the death sentence, and that he is trying to reduce this sentence to 15 years in prison.

Arrested in 2008, Saeed Malekpour, an alumnus of Tehran’s Sharif University and a web developer and resident of Canada, was sentenced to death in October 2010 on charges of “blasphemy” for alleged “management of pornographic websites.” The Supreme Court overturned the sentence in November 2011 because of deficiencies in investigations and insufficient evidence, and forwarded his case to the Revolutionary Court. However, the Supreme Court upheld his death sentence on January 30, 2012. He is currently being held at the IRGC’s Ward 2-A in Evin Prison.

In a May 2012 interview with the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, Maryam Malekpour, Saeed Malekpour’s sister, said that her brother had been repeatedly coerced to provide television confessions, which he refused.