TEHRAN, Iran — The lawyer of a man convicted of building and promoting pornographic websites says a death sentence against his client has been converted to life imprisonment.

Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei is quoted by the semiofficial Mehr news agency, which is often used by the government to make announcements, as saying Monday that blogger Saeed Malekpour will spend the rest of his life in jail.

Malekpour was arrested in 2008 and confessed on Iranian TV that he developed and promoted pornographic websites. He was found guilty in 2012 of spreading corruption and sentenced to death.

Tabatabaei said the Iranian-Canadian computer programmer has repented. Iranian media have called Malekpour the head of the biggest Persian-language network of pornographic websites.

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