Saeed Malekpour Returned to Prison from Hospital

According to reports, Saeed Malekpour, a web designer who was transferred from prison to hospital due to a heart attack, has been returned to prison. Mr. Malekpour was moved to Taleghani Hospital in Tehran on October 19 due to a previous heart attack, and according to his sister, Maryam Malekpour, he was returned to prison after four days. In an interview with the websites HRANA and the Human Rights Campaign in Iran, Maryam Malekpour stated that during her brother's hospitalization, one of his hands and one of his feet were 'chained to the bed with handcuffs and shackles.' According to the report, this prisoner was denied visitors during his hospitalization, and the treatment he received from the guards was 'very inappropriate and disturbing.' Maryam Malekpour also reported that a 'suspicious mass' was seen in her brother's knee radiology images, and he is now awaiting the results of MRI tests. She mentioned that during his 10 years in prison, her brother had not been transferred to outside hospitals for other illnesses, including kidney stones, prostate issues, and knee arthritis. Mr. Malekpour is a materials engineering graduate from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran and is a resident of Canada. He returned to Tehran in October 2008 to visit his ill father and was arrested. Saeed Malekpour was initially sentenced to death, but this sentence was eventually reduced to life imprisonment. The charges against Mr. Malekpour are related to the use of pornography websites utilizing the software he developed for sharing images on the internet. His lawyers and family have repeatedly emphasized that Saeed Malekpour was the sole inventor of this software and had no knowledge of its usage location.