Blogger and journalist Ali Pir Hossein Lou was arrested in 2009 and charged with founding and operating the website Green Wave of Freedom, one of the most active news websites that emerged with the 2009 Green Movement.
Name: Ali Pir Hossein Lou
Born: 1980, Iran
Career: Blogger and journalist for publications including Shargh, Sarmayeh, Aban, Nameh and Aftab.
Charges: Founding and operating the website Green Wave of Freedom.
Ali Pir Hossein Lou started his blogging career in 2001, and from 2002-2007 presided over the blog site Alpar (“Clever”), one of the most prominent and popular political blogs of its era.
On September 17, 2009 agents of the Intelligence Ministry arrested him and sent him to Cell Block 209 of Evin Prison, where he remained in solitary confinement for 48 days. He was released on November 3 on a bond of close to $40,000 pending the court’s verdict, and received a sentence of three years in prison. An appellate court later upheld the sentence, but suspended the verdict after accepting a request to reopen the case.
Pir Hossein Lou was charged with founding and operating the website Green Wave of Freedom, one of the most active news websites that emerged with the 2009 Green Movement. The website played a pivotal role in documenting state abuses following the crackdown on protesters, and was the first to publish the names of young people killed on the street. It also revealed details about the torture of young detainees at Kahrizak Detention Center.
“At the Revolutionary Court there is too much justice,” he wrote during his trial, “so much so that the accused is not allowed to read his case file, to know his charges and to review the evidence. The lawyer can read the file once—or if he has a relatively good relationship with somebody, a couple of times—but not all of it and not in peace.”
Judge Mohammad Moghisei, known for his harsh verdicts against political dissidents, presided over the trial. “It is a pity that you continue breathing,” he reportedly told Pir Hossein Lou after the main court session.
“We are living in great and momentous days,” Pir Hossein Lou wrote in a note of thanks to his friends and his classmates after his release. “We should appreciate these days. We might not be aware of exactly what is happening—to each one of us individually, and to our society. But when the dust settles the perspectives will become clear. We will then understand what path we have taken and how our words and deeds have affected this path. These days will pass and we will join history, and then we will finally know of whom history approves.”
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
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