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Web Developer Sentenced To Death In Iran
An anonymous reader points out the case of Saeed Malekpour, an Iranian-born permanent resident of Canada who worked as a web developer. In 2008, during a visit to Iran, Malekpour was arrested and detained by Iranian authorities on charges that he designed and moderated "adult content websites." In 2009, he was sentenced to death for "acting against the national security, insulting and desecrating the principles of Islam, and agitating the public mind." Malekpour wrote photo-uploading software, and in a letter he sent from prison, he said it was used by porn sites without his knowledge. This week an Iranian court reviewed the case and confirmed that the death sentence was an acceptable punishment. According to one Canadian publication, "Human rights monitors believe that Malekpour, one of a number of people held on Internet-related charges, is trapped by a convoluted justice system that is manipulated by rival factions in Iran."
Disclaimer: I am an Iranian with intimate knowledge of the case. The whole story is not being told, and I will fill in the blanks for you:
Saeed had been getting into the meth too much lately, he was stark raving paranoid. He and his little brother Ahmad were in their late and mid thirties, respectively, and still living with their parents in a nice Tehran-gaudy cookie-cutter house in suburbia, a place where all wood on the furniture was spray-painted gold. Saeed's improvised digs were indicative of the classic downward spiral of the burgeoning tweeker -- first, he moved out of his comfortable air-conditioned bedroom inside the house and into the garage, where he could toil with his fiendish plans all night without disturbing his sleeping parents. Next came the cameras. He crudely installed cameras -- which looked as every bit as out-of-place as those dumb wireless earpieces people use with their phones -- on 2 walls outside the garage. He had to see what everybody was doing at all times, and before the door was kicked in he could make a mad dash for the toilet and flush all of the shit in his possession.
Even the most hardcore tweekers are ashamed of their habit -- they say they're gonna "go smoke," but when you ask them in ignorance what exactly they're gonna smoke, and why they won't smoke it right there on the spot, they just answer, "shit," to both questions. The crackpipes Saeed could shove up his ass 'till the heat died down, but it was the piss-bucket that really worried us all.
Ahh, the piss-bucket, the classic sign of every hopeless addict in too deep, too impatient or paranoid, to tiptoe through the hallways and piss in the sink or bathtub as any civilized human would. The piss-bucket actually transcends addictions. It is the only common physical evidence of both obsessive video game-playing and week-long meth binges when the two do not directly intersect.
Ahmad was the only tweeker who showed signs of hunger during a meth binge. His parents wisely acted as his patient advocates and reaped the spoils of his monthly retard pension when it came in the mail. "Rent," they called it, but they really kept the whole thing($944 a month) and doled out $20 every weekend to placate him. No questions were asked as long as Ahmad took his horse pills and butt shots administered by the government behavioral health department. Not that hooking up a poor buddy is a bad thing, but you've pretty much burned yourself out when you spend your meager $20 allowance smoking meth in some bedless Tehran flophouse.
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
If my country commits human rights abuses and yours does too, It would be pretty silly for me to criticize your country. Degree doesn't matter. Human rights abuses are human rights abuses. If my country tortures just one person, it's lost any kind of moral high ground from which to cast criticism, even on another country's widespread use of torture. If you don't believe this, then please explain exactly how many tortures my country can commit while still be allowed to criticize yours for torture?
Another example: "Sure, we commit genocide, but not as much as them!" is a ridiculous stance.
Sorry, but it is not. In fact, events by now have thoroughly refuted it. The woman was an agent and she was traded for, the two guys were innocent patsies and they had to earn their release through standard channels. The OP is right: the original story strained credulity all along and in the end it was proven false. Only in American would people not raise an eyebrow when told about this.