Before his arrest in 2013, Alami wrote a regular satirical column for the reformist paper Shargh. He was one of 17 who were arrested in January 2013 as part of a wave of arrests of journalists in the Islamic Republic. He was taken to Evin Prison and was released on bail about a month later, having been subjected to interrogations. He was later sentenced to one year in prison on charges of propaganda against the regime.

Arrest

On the night of January 27th 2013, a group of eight agents from the Intelligence Ministry raided the offices of the reformist newspaper Etemad. They immediately took away the mobile phones and the ID cards of those present and warned them against contacting anybody outside. They also prevented anybody from entering or leaving the premises. After searching the premises and confiscating disks and computers they questioned three journalists and then took them to an unknown location.

Similar raids were carried out on the offices of the weekly newspaper Aseman and newspapers Bahar, Arman and Shargh, where Pouria Alami worked and where he was arrested. The agents then took the arrested journalists to their homes, searched the homes and confiscated laptops, books and notes. Altogether, 11 journalists were arrested that night and six more in the following days.

Judiciary officials did not announce any reasons for the arrests, but a week earlier, judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei told reporters: “Unfortunately, based on the information that I have received from reliable sources, a number of our journalists…are working hand in hand with the westerners and counter-revolutionaries.” And the day after the arrests, Iranian media reported that the 11 journalists had been arrested on a "warrant issued by the judiciary” on charges of "cooperation with Persian-language anti-revolutionary media," referring primarily to the BBC and the Voice of America (VOA).

Influencing the Presidential Election

Most observers saw the arrests as a means of influencing the outcome of the presidential election planned for June 2013. On February 7th, Ali Motahari, a conservative member of parliament who regularly quarrels with parliament’s hardliners, said that the Intelligence Ministry had not offered any credible evidence for the arrests. “Announcing the names of these individuals and accusing them before any of the accusations are proven is an unlawful act,” he said. “I believe that part of the government wants to control the results [of the upcoming election].”

In any case, Hassan Rouhani won the election with the support of the reformists.

Around 200 journalists, both within and outside Iran, issued a statement and protested against the arrest. In a rare move, some of the reformist newspapers that were raided and whose writers were detained publicly protested against the crackdown. Daily newspaper Shargh objected to the arrest of Pouria Alami on its front page. In its January 30th issue, the newspaper published an empty space where Alami's column would usually have appeared and explained that "it will not be printed until further notice." Many Iranians also protested against the arrests by posting pictures of the detained journalists on their Facebook pages.

On February 8th, it was reported that families of the arrested journalists were prevented from visiting them at Evin Prison, despite the fact that, earlier, the examining magistrate had stated that the families were free to meet them.

On January 30th and February 5th, the Ministry of Intelligence issued two statements claiming that the arrested journalists were working with the BBC and for the “sedition” of 2009, the term used by Islamic Republic officials to refer to the Green Movement that emerged as a protest against the official results of the disputed 2009 presidential election.

In a third statement on February 19th, the ministry toned down its charges against the arrested journalists, saying that they were the “unconscious” collaborators of a “media network” that it said the ministry had uncovered. The statement claimed that a list of Persian-language media outside Iran, plus the Radio France Persian Service, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America and Reporters without Borders, belonged to this “counter-revolutionary” network, which was run by the BBC.

In a press conference, Ejei implicitly denied earlier accusations — made by Fars News Agency and other media affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, as well as by the government — that the arrested journalists were spies, even though no indictment against them had been issued. “It is not right if somebody names a name,” he said. “If tomorrow that person is acquitted then he can go to court to restore his good name.” However, there was a catch to what Ejei said. Their release, he said, depended on how much they were willing to “cooperate.” This was regarded by many as code for people being forced to confess.

The security and the judiciary establishments of the Islamic Republic, however, never offered any documents or evidence to substantiate their charges against the arrested journalists.

Pouria Alami was released on February 27th 2013, after 32 days of detention and interrogation. Typical of the Iranian judiciary, the charges were not dropped and his case remained open. To secure his release, he was forced to post a bail of 200 million tomans, close to $50,000 at the time.

Waiting for Prison

Six years later, on October 12th 2019, Pouria Alami used his column in newspaper Shargh to announce that his one-year prison sentence on charges of “propaganda against the regime” had been upheld by the courts of appeal. “For days I have been waiting for somebody to tell me that this news is a lie, an error, and Pouria is not going to go to prison,” he wrote, “but it appears that the only mistake is us; we are the error.”

“I am not a hero, sir, but a simple writer” wrote Alami in his column. “I am leaving your arena. I am going to wear the prison uniform and — out of respect for my readers and with gratitude for your wise verdict — I will go to prison to pay the penalty for remaining in my country and refusing to sell my pen to either side in this arena.”

Alami’s lawyer Kaveh Rezvani Rad told the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) the verdict is related to his arrest in 2013. Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to five years in prison for “propaganda against the regime” and banned him from leaving Iran for two years. The court of appeals reduced the prison sentence to one year but upheld the two-year ban on leaving the country.

Rezvani Rad said he had requested a retrial and hopes the verdict will be vacated. Mehdi Rahmanian, the publisher of Shargh newspaper, tweeted that Pouria Alami had tendered his resignation but has not yet been summoned to go to prison and is currently not behind bars. He expressed that he and his colleagues’ hope that the sentence would not be carried out and Alami would stay out of prison.