My friend Nazli finally got the OK from Hossein Derakhshan's sister, Azadeh Derakhshan, to publicly announce that Hossein Derakhshan, one of the first Iranian bloggers, was arrested on the afternoon of November 1, in Tehran.Jahan News reported that he was arrested for spying for Isreal but the Iranian government has yet to issue any official public statement regarding the reason for Hossein's arrest.
I am quoting this news from Nazli Kamvari, a friend of Hossein Derakhshan and an Iranian blogger living in Toronto, who has been directly in touch with Hossein's sister and just wrote about this news in her Persian blog.
This is the question we must have answered right away. Why was he arrested? What has he done to warrant his imprisonment? If you have any ideas about how to get this question answered, please feel free to leave them in the comments below, or contact us at for.hoder@gmail.com.
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On his 20 October 2008 post, Hossein said that his passport had been confiscated upon entry and that he was supposed to go within the week and recover it, and he anticipated that this will involve questioning.
ReplyDeleteAs the last post was on 30 October 2008, he obviously did not go within the week. So, whether the arrest had something to do with this or not is a question...
The issues of spying for Israel and such are basically fabricated, or at best assumed, since that was the biggest crime anyone could think of, and it coincided with the arrest of a few people on the same charges. But there is absolutely no evidence of that and so it is better that you don't mention it. He never said anything about the reasons for the arrest to his family when he called them.