Iran's eye on social media leads to Canadian Mostafa Azizi's arrest

He made his name as a writer, and television producer in his home country, Iran. And after Mostafa Azizi emigrated to Canada with his family in 2008, he became a prominent cultural figure in the Iranian community in Toronto.

His children are Canadian citizens... He is a permanent resident, in the process of gaining citizenship.

But this past December, the 52-year-old Mr. Azizi returned to Iran, to visit his ailing father. After all, expatriates had been invited back to Iran, to live and work. 

An Iranian deputy minister was even quoted as saying, "We guarantee that any individual who has not committed a violation will not have a problem".

But within a month of his return home, Mostafa Azizi was in a Tehran jail, one of its most notorious jails, the Evin prison. And he's still there.

Parastoo Azizi is Mostafa Azizi's daughter. She was in our Toronto studio. 

Even as Iranian leaders have been meeting with Western counterparts to try to seal a new nuclear agreement... arrests and detentions such as Mostafa Azizi's have been ongoing.

Since last May, dozens of people inside Iran have been jailed at least in part for their use of social media. The arrests for activity on the web have been part of a wider crackdown that the Iranian government has dubbed "Operation Spider."

Hadi Ghaemi is the Executive Director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. He's been tracking the program. He was in New York City. 

This segment was produced by The Current's Gord Westmacott and Ines Colabrese.