Time to correct this injustice

Iran’s justice system is notorious for arbitrary arrests and convictions on dubious charges

For just over a decade now, a Canadian resident has languished in an Iranian prison on trumped-up charges. Saeed Malekpour has been subjected to torture and for years lived under a sentence of death. Now his family and friends say he has suffered a heart attack and his health is failing.

It’s time for the Canadian government to do what it can to secure Malekpour’s release on humanitarian grounds. It may be his only hope.

Malekpour’s nightmare began back in 2008, when he travelled from his home in Victoria, B.C., to his native Iran to visit his dying father.

An engineer and web designer, he was arrested and convicted of masterminding an online pornography network, supposedly at the behest of a foreign power seeking to discredit the country’s clerical regime. At the time, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were cracking down on internet activities deemed immoral or “un-Islamic,” and Malekpour’s supporters say he was an innocent man who was simply a convenient target for their campaign.

Tortured and held in solitary confinement for months, Malekpour eventually made a forced confession. He was sentenced to death (later commuted to life in prison), and after years of mistreatment his family says his health has seriously deteriorated. He is 43 but his sister Maryam, a Canadian citizen, told the Star’s Tonda McCharles last week that in recent photographs she has seen he looks many years older.

Iran’s justice system is notorious for arbitrary arrests and convictions on dubious charges laid for essentially political reasons. By all accounts, Malekpour’s case falls into this category. Amnesty International and other groups that shine a light on those unjustly imprisoned around the world are calling for renewed pressure to secure his release.

Ottawa has been pressing Iran on Malekpour’s behalf for years, although that became a lot more complicated when the Harper government broke diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012 and closed Canada’s embassy in Tehran.

Despite that chill, Canada has had some successes in similar cases. In 2016, for example, the Trudeau government managed to obtain the release of Homa Hoodfar, a Montreal academic detained in Tehran on unspecified charges after she had been held for 100 days.

The government has raised Malekpour’s case with representatives of the Iranian regime, but it should renew its efforts on his behalf now, for humanitarian reasons if nothing else. Canada and Iran still don’t have diplomatic relations, but Ottawa may have some leverage. For one thing, given the significant Iranian community in Canada, the Iranian government wants restoration of a visa regime between the two countries to make travel easier.

And it’s possible that the Trump administration’s move this week to reimpose tough sanctions on Iran after withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal with that country might give Canada an edge. The Iranian government has fresh reasons to cultivate other relationships in the West, and may not be averse to making a gesture of friendship.

Setting Malekpour free would be such a gesture. The charges against him never made any sense, and the original reasons for prosecuting him are far in the past. It’s high time he was set free and allowed to return home.