Kianush Sanjari

Kianoosh Sanjari[1] (Persian: کیانوش سنجری) is an Iranian former blogger[2][3][4] and a TV journalist who worked for Voice of America TV in Washington, D.C., from 2008 to 2013. He also worked as a researcher for the Boroumand Foundation, the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, and the Iran Human Rights organization in Norway.

He has been arrested in Iran several times by the security forces, between 1999 until 2007, and served two years in Evin Prison, then he fled Iran to Iraqi Kurdistan.

He received asylum from Amnesty International and traveled to Norway and then to the United States.

In 2016, Sanjari returned to Iran after several years of working with Persian-language media abroad. He was arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

But just a few days after arriving in Tehran, he was arrested by intelligence ministry agents and taken to Ward 209 at Evin Prison. He was interrogated and after a trial that lasted only minutes, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to 11 years in prison. He would have to serve a minimum of five years. He was also banned from leaving Iran for two years after serving his sentence.

In early 2019, after serving three years of his sentence, Sanjari fell sick and the prison doctor ruled that he must be granted a medical leave of absence. Instead, he was quickly transferred to Aminabad Psychiatric Hospital. "One day they handcuffed me, put me in a car and transferred me, under guard, to Aminabad, also known as Razi, Psychiatric Hospital. They took me directly to the ward and two soldiers stood guard over me. At night the nurse injected me with something that for all intents and purposes locked my jaw. I fell unconscious after the injection and, in the morning when I woke up, I saw that my hands and feet were chained to the bed." He describes this moment as the "most painful" of his life.[5]

But it did not end there. By order of the Special Medical Committee, Sanjari was hospitalized several more times. He reported that during one of these hospitalizations, he was subjected to electric shocks nine times.

He is currently on medical furlough, but is required to regularly present himself at Evin Prison, reporting to the office responsible for monitoring people convicted or charged with security offenses.

Amnesty International emphasized the case of Sanjari in its campaign for freedom of expression irrepressible.info, as Sanjari's charges stopped him from commenting and reporting the clashes on his blog, in a country where state media is heavily censored.[6]