He was kept in solitary confinement until December 2004, during which he was tortured and was deprived of contact with his family and given no access to a lawyer.

Omid Memarian, a graduate of the University of California Berkeley School of Journalism and a journalist,  worked with a number of newspapers in Iran including Shargh, the country’s most popular reformist newspaper. He started blogging in both English in Persian in 2002, writing about social issues. In 2001 Memarian was awarded the Golden Pen award at Iran’s National Press Festival.

Memarian was arrested on October 10th 2004, at his office. The authorities also searched Memarian’s home and confiscated his personal notes and computer. He was kept in solitary confinement until early December, during which he was interrogated and tortured — including being beaten with electrical cables. During his incarceration, he was not allowed any contact with his family, had no access to a lawyer and was not officially charged.

Starting in September 2004, Iranian authorities arrested more than 20 journalists — most of them working mainly online — including Memarian, as well as civil society activists. Most were released, including Memarian in December. However, according to Human Rights Watch, on December 10th, the father of detained journalist Ali Mazroui (who was also the president of the Association of Iranian Journalists) wrote a public letter to President Mohammed Khatami, implicating the judiciary in the torture and secret detention of the detainees.

Immediately afterwards, the chief prosecutor of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi, who was known as Iran’s “Butcher of the Press,” filed charges against Mazroui for libel. On December 11th, Mortazavi ordered the detention of three of the formerly released individuals — Omid Memarian, Shahram Rafizadeh and Roozbeh Mir Ebrahimi — as witnesses for the prosecution in the case. These three journalists and Javad Gholam Tamimi, a journalist who had remained in detention since October 18th, were brought to Mortazavi’s office.

Treated “Gently as Flowers”

Mortazavi threatened the four detainees with lengthy prison sentences unless they denied Mazroui’s allegations. They were interrogated for three consecutive days for eight hours each day. On December 14th, the four detainees were brought in front of a televised “press conference” arranged by Mortazavi, and were forced to deny that they had been subjected to solitary confinement, torture and ill-treatment during their earlier detention. That evening, Iran’s state-controlled television broadcasted video recordings that showed the four detainees saying that their jailers had treated them as “gently as flowers.”

At the time, Joe Stork, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division, said: “If there are any credible charges against these journalists, the judiciary should hold fair trials instead of forcing them to appear on television and say their torturers treated them well."

On April 20th 2005, a judiciary spokesman said that an official investigation confirmed that their confessions had been coerced. “The interrogators and prosecutors committed a series of negligent and careless acts in this case that led to the abuse of the detainees’ words and writings in producing confession letters,” the spokesman said.

In 2005, Memarian left Iran for the United States. The same year he received the Human Rights Defender Award, Human Rights Watch's highest honor. “Omid Memarian represents the generation of human rights defenders in Iran who came of age during the last decade of promised reforms. As an insightful and popular commentator, he represents a threat to the current hardliners who are rolling back basic human rights in Iran,” said Hadi Ghaemi, an Iran researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division.

Sentenced in Absentia

Despite having left Iran permanently, in 2009 Memarian was put on trial in absentia along with his three co-defendants  — Roozbeh Mir Ebrahimi, Shahram Rafizadeh, and Javad Gholam Tamimi — in what became known as the “Bloggers Case.” All, except Gholam Tamimi, had left Iran by the time the trial was held. They were each sentenced to three years and three months in prison, flogging and a cash fine on charges of “participating in the establishment of illegal organizations,” “ membership to illegal organizations,” “propaganda against the regime,” “disseminating lies” and “disturbing public order.”

Memarian, who now lives in the state of New York, has tirelessly continued his activities in journalism and defending human rights. He is currently is a freelance writer for BBC Persian and for the news agency Rooz Online. His op-ed pieces have been published by the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Newsweek, Time and the Wall Street Journal.

In 2013, Memarian edited a book, "Sketches of Iran: A Glimpse from the Front Lines of Human Rights," which was published by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. It consists of 40 essays paired with political cartoons from artists inside and outside of the country.