Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Iranian-Canadian Hossein Derakhshan aka Hoder, credited with sparking the boom in reform blogging among Iranians, has reportedly been sentenced to 19 years in prison by an Iranian court. The World’s Clark Boyd has more on the story.
Download MP3

• The World’s Technology Podcast

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

LISA MULLINS: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World, a coproduction of the BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH in Boston. Hossein Derakhshan is a blogging pioneer. He’s the one who developed the tools that allowed Iranians to blog in their own language. But he hasn’t been blogging of late. For almost two years now, Derakhshan’s been in prison in Iran. He went on trial there this summer. And today came word from inside Iran that he’s been sentenced to 19 and a half years in prison. The World’s Clark Boyd reports.

CLARK BOYD:  Hossein Derakhshan began blogging IN 2001, in Persian and English, under the online name Hoder.

HADI GHAEMI:  Through his writings, both in English and Farsi, he became quite well known to people who followed Iran.

BOYD: Hadi Ghaemi is the executive director of the New York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Ghaemi says that, for a time, Hoder was an inspiration to Iranians who wanted to air critiques of their government online.

GHAEMI: Originally he was quite sympathetic to the reform movement and called for change within Iran. But when Ahmedinijad became President, he fully threw himself behind Ahmedinijad’s policies, and actually became quite a fierce critic of people who were challenging Ahmedinijad.

BOYD: Derakhshan’s ideological about-face shocked and angered many of his readers. But Shahram Kholdi wasn’t surprised. Kholdi is an Iranian exile. He became friends with Derakhshan in Canada, where Derakshan had moved and become a citizen. Kholdi says Derakshan’s just a mercurial character.

SHAHRAM KHOLDI: Hossein’s life, in my opinion, is a rollercoaster of shifting ideas and I would say that he is confusingly running for new ideas, without being able to commit himself to anything for a relatively long period of time.

BOYD: At one point, Derakhshan traveled to Israel in a bid to blog about Iranian-Israeli relations. He also began to speak out angrily against US policy toward Iran. In 2007, in a commentary for the Guardian newspaper, he wrote “If the US waged a war against Iran, I would absolutely go back and defend Iran.” A few years ago, he did move back to Iran. Then, in November of 2008, he was arrested and thrown in prison, for, among other things, cooperating with enemy states and propaganda against the Islamic regime. Derakhshan was tried over the summer. Last week brought word that the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty. Today, an Iranian news site reported that Derakhshan had received a prison sentence of 19 and a half years. Derakhshan’s family later confirmed that news. Robert Guerra has been monitoring the case as project director for the internet freedom program at Freedom House in Washington.

ROBERT GUERRA: The Iranian regime post-election has incredibly cracked down on human rights defenders, on bloggers and on just average citizens that are pushing for freedom in the country. Still, it’s an incredibly harsh sentence being given to him, for just speaking his mind. I mean, people may not like what people say online, but in the end that’s the right that everyone has.

BOYD: Derakhshan does have the right to appeal. Experts say that based on the cases of some 500 people arrested after last year’s elections, he may get his sentence reduced by a few years. But Derakhshan’s friend, Shahram Kholdi, says something else might happen instead.

KHOLDI:  Hossein’s family are from a very hard core, right wing camp of the Islamic republic’s establishment. And maybe Hossein is thinking that the supreme leader may grant him pardon.

BOYD: Hossein Derakhshan’s sentence is due to be formally read on Saturday. For the World, this is Clark Boyd.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.