TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian semi-official ISNA news agency is reporting the country’s top leader has pardoned a controversial Iranian-Canadian blogger.
The report says authorities informed Hossein Derakhshan about his amnesty late Wednesday when he returned to Tehran’s Evin prison from one of his occasional leaves.
The pardon by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei came more than 11 years before the end of Derakhshan’s prison term.
Derakhshan, who moved to Toronto from Tehran in 2000, is the founder of one of the first Farsi-language blogs.
He was first detained in 2008, and in 2010 he was sentenced to more than 19 1/2 years in prison for his writings, the term later dropped to 17 years.
Writing from Canada, Derakhshan, 39, was initially a critic of Iran’s clerical leadership. He visited Israel, Iran’s archenemy, in 2006.
He later became a critic of the Iranian opposition.
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