A Canadian immigrant is back in British Columbia after a hellish experience in his native Iran.

Web programmer Saeed Malekpour was arrested in 2008 by the Cyber Crimes Unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards after travelling there to visit his father, who was suffering with cancer.

According to the Amnesty International website, Malekpour was thrown in Evin Prison.

His crime? The permanent resident of Canada was accused of creating an open-source program to enable people to upload photos onto the web.

Iranian officials claimed that he was facilitating the dissemination of pornography and insulting Islam, for which he was sentenced to death.

That was commuted to life in prison in 2014. He reportedly escaped Iran recently while on a furlough from jail.

His sister, Maryam, tweeted video of Malekpour walking into the arrivals area at Vancouver International Airport.

https://twitter.com/FreeSaeedM/status/1157470809482383360

In a 2010 letter, Malekpour described how his confession was obtained through torture and through threats that were directed against himself and his family.

He claimed that he was also promised a release from jail if he provided false information to his interrogators. But that pledge was not kept.

"Most of the time, the torture was performed by a group," he declared. "While I remained blindfolded and handcuffed, several interrogators struck me with cables, batons, and their fists.

"At times they would flog my head and neck. Such mistreatment was aimed at forcing me to write what the interrogators were dictating, and to compel me to play a role in front of the camera based on their scenarios," he continued. "Sometimes, they used extremely painful electrical shock that would paralyze me temporarily. Once in October 2008, the interrogators stripped me while I was blindfolded and threatened to rape me with a bottle of water."

According to his family, Malekpour suffered a heart attack in jail last year.