HRANA News Agency – The case of Ali Asghar Honarmand, one of the principal members of a famous website; “Narengi” is on appeal stage.
According to the report of Human Rights Activists News Agency in Iran (HRANA), the case of Ali Asghar Honarmand one of the founders and the last editor of the Narengi website, is on the appeal stage.
Ali Asghar Honarmand has been sentenced to 11 years imprisonment in the lower court in Kerman.
Ameri, Ali Asghar Honarmand’s lawyer, in an interview with HRANA’s reporter, noting that his client has been convicted in the primitive stage, said his case was sent to the appeal court. He refused to comment about the other issues related to this case.
In December 2013, eleven members and activists of technical group “Pat Shargh Gavashir”, owner of “Narengi” website, were arrested by the Revolutionary Guards intelligence service in Kerman. Seven of the detainees were authors and members of the technical team of “Narengi” website.
In June 2014 and according to the announcement by Yadu’llah Movahes, general and Revolutionary prosecutor of Kerman, these cyberspace and internet activists were sentenced from 1 to 11 years Imprisonment. At the same time in relation to the charges of these people, Movahedi had told that; “Their activities such as designing websites and running websites, were in line with producing media content for the hostile governments”.
Also, according to the public prosecutor of Kerman, Yadu’llah Movahed; “These people were mysteriously and under pretense of information and communications in connection with satellite channels including BBC Persian, and provided some information to the opposition media, which were identified by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Kerman.”
Ali Asghar Honarmand has been sentenced to 11 years, Abbas Vahedi to 2. 5 years, Hossein Nozari to 7 years, and Ehsan Paknejad to 5 years imprisonment. Also 7 others members of the team Narengi and Pat Shargh Gavashir Company have been sentenced to 1. 5 years imprisonment with three years suspended sentences.
Narengi website was established since 2007 and aimed to provide news and information in the field of technology and information. Ali Asghar Honarmand has announced that the reason of choosing this name for the website is his favorite color which is orange (Narengi in Persian). Earlier, Honarmand in an interview with the Paryana magazine said, his aim of establishing Narengi website was creating an alternative website for some websites such as Angajet and Gizmodo in Iran.
Narengi website was awarded in 2010 as the best informative website on the third “Online” Festival of Iranian websites and in 2012 was award-winning Persian blog by the Deutsche Welle.
Narengi website on 7 February 2012 (3 months after Steve Jobs, founder of Apple had passed away) put the first Persian translation of Steve Jobs’s biography (author Walter Isaacson) in 523 pages translated by Naser Dadgostar, for free to download on the website.