Hossein “Hoder” Derakhshan, widely regard as the father of Iranian blogging, has reappeared online on his Facebook profile.
He’s recently posted an album of new images titled The New Me including one titled “Gradually getting ready for a new life”, which was added 3 hours ago (it’s 18.25 in London right now).
Derakhshan was previously arrested in 2008 and eventually sentenced to 19.5 years in prison in September last year by the Iranian authorities under the usual trumped-up charges related to “collaborating with enemy states”.
Noted blogger Jeff Jarvis has previously described Derakhshan as ‘showing his world how to blog’ after creating bridges between Persian and English-language communities in Iran and Canada, where he had dual citizenship. Since the mid-90s, he has been advocating the use of the internet as a means for social and political reform in Iran.
Derakhshan had been an active Iranian pro-democracy blogger since 2005, but his blog, Hoder.com has been offline for some time.
Back in April this year he was briefly allowed prison leave but went back behind bars shortly after, according to Human Rights House of Iran.
It’s to be hoped that Derakhshan is now out of jail for good. We’ve reached out to him for confirmation and details of what’s happened.
UPDATE: We’ve since learned he’s on a very short leave from Evin – this is the prison he was sent to.
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