Ali-Asghar Honarmand, founder and Editor-in-Chief of the website Narenji and an online activist, lives in Kerman. On May 24, 2014, he was sentenced to a total of 11 years imprisonment on accusations of “propaganda against the state” and “actions against national security.” He was arrested in January 2016 to carry out the court sentence but some time later he was released. The exact date of his release is not known.

Honarmand and 13 other members of Narenji were arrested by agents of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on December 3, 2013. Two days after their arrest and interrogation, two of the 14 members, an editor and an intern of the website, were released. The names of the other members of the website who were arrested and later faced judicial sentences were as follows: Hossein Nozari, Ehsan Paknejad, Abbas Vahedi, Reza Nozari, Mehdi Faryabi, Amir Sadeghpour, Alireza Vaziri, Mohammad Mousa-Zadeh, Mostafa Pourghareb and Malihah Nakhaaya.

According to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, 11 members of Narenji were sentenced at Branch 4 of the Revolutionary Courts in Kerman on May 24, 2014, on charges including “propaganda against the state” and “actions against national security.” 

Ali-Asghar Honarmand, Hossein Nozari, Ehsan Paknejad and Abbas Vahedi were sentenced to 11 years to two and a half years in prison respectively, and seven others were sentenced to six months in prison with their sentences suspended for three years. Their appeal was held at Branch 1 of the Kerman judiciary more than a year later.

In January 2016, while Ali-Asghar Honarmand, Hossein Nozari, Ehsan Paknejad and Abbas Vahedi were serving their prison sentences, according to one informed source in an interview with the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, the appeal court had not yet given their judgment to either the clients or their lawyers.

The previously mentioned individuals had been sentenced to prison based on accusations of “propaganda against the state” and “actions against national security through activity on the Narenji website.”

On December 3, 2013, the day after the arrest of a number of writers and members of Narenji concerning the aforementioned accusations, Ahmad Qorbani, the Deputy Prosecutor of Kerman, said: “These individuals are accused of acting against national security through collaborating with foreign networks and the production of content for counter revolutionary websites with the intention of overthrowing the Islamic Republic”.

Qorbani also said: “The main members of this gang were taking their cues from fugitive dissidents.”

An informed source told the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran: “According to the prosecution, Pat Shargh Govashir Technology Company had designed websites for those involved with the Green Movement [which began after the contested 2009 presidential election protests]. But they only designed the sites. They only fulfilled their role as web developers. Customers ordered designs and they delivered, but the content of the sites had nothing to do with them.”

The source continued: “The lawyers are saying that nothing can be found in the case that could be used as evidence for the charges of propaganda or action against national security and it is unclear for what reason the lower court introduced these accusations. The lawyers and their defendants said all of this in the appeals court and it was expected that the appeals court would vote against the case with all of the defendants being acquitted. However, today we found that four of the individuals had their sentence enforced and were sent to prison without the appeal vote having been heard. We hope that if they were arrested because of the elections, they will be released sooner because there is really no evidence for these charges.”

Pat Shargh Govashir is the technology company that owns the Narenji website. The site covered news stories related to the technological world and gadgets. The website was launched by a group of technology bloggers in Kerman, which quickly transformed into one of the most popular technology websites in Iran. After the arrests of its members, both the Narenji website and the company Pat Shargh Govashir were closed.

Narenji was a Persian language news and analysis site that was founded in 2007. It  was initially established to familiarize people with new technologies in their daily lives. In 2010, Narenji won most informative website in the third Online Festival of Iranian Websites and in 2012 it was awarded the best Persian blog by Deutsche Welle.

Despite the reputation of Narenji, the legal process and the status of a number of the detainees in this case, including Honarmand, remains in a state of ambiguity.