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Days before Sattar Beheshti was hauled away by Iran's cyber police and allegedly tortured to death, a friend urged him to close his taboo Facebook account and stop blogging. Anguished but determined, he replied: "I can't. I'll go crazy if I don't write."

In his last blog, hours before he was arrested at his mother's house on October 30 on charges of "actions against national security on social networks and Facebook", he wrote: "They sent me a message saying, 'Tell your mother she will soon be wearing black because you don't shut your big mouth'."

But he vowed: "I will not keep silent even if death looms". Defiantly, he added: "Stop your injustice so I will be able to stop denouncing it … The laws of your regime can't even be found in the jungle."

Though silenced and under house arrest, Beheshti's family have made clear through contacts that they do not want his violent death to be in vain. It should be some comfort to them that his death has put a global spotlight on the human-rights abuses in Iran that his blog documented.