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."

Comments

In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

You're in danger the second you step into Iran. Don't do business there, don't visit there.

Re:In other words,

[Racemaniac]

Since when do you have to enter the US to get arrested by it? look at the megaupload guys...

Re:In other words,

[purpledinoz]

What really irks me is that case of American hikers caught by the Iranians in Iraq. First of all, why do they have to go to Iraq to go hiking? They KNOW it's dangerous. By being caught, they gave Iran a bargaining chip. What the hell is wrong with these people?

Re:In other words,

[SuricouRaven]

Because it is remote, inaccessible and dangerous. That's the fun for the hiking hardcore.

Re:In other words,

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

Or live in the UK: Richard O'Dwyer

Re:In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

What really irks me is how a random group of Americans can be discovered by Iranians wandering into Iraq, the media is told OH THEY'RE JUST HIKERS, and a single person finds the story credible.

Re:In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the guys at gitmo, or to those who will be detained based on the "National Defense Authorization Act".

Re:In other words,

[Cederic]

No, in the US you only need to be born black in Detroit to be put to death.

Meanwhile hosting a website that links to other websites can earn you 20 years in jail when you've never even fucking visited the fucking country.

I haven't even mentioned the decade of torture and false imprisonment in a foreign country for the evil crime of "pissing off someone that works for the Americans". Or do you really believe that everyone in Guantanamo is guilty?

Trust me, from where I'm sat the US poses are far greater threat to my ongoing life and freedom than Iran does.

Re:In other words,

[betterunixthanunix]

it may be true that our justice system committing these sorts of abuses less frequently than say the Iranians

Considering how many people we arrest each year, and how comparatively few the Iranians arrest (the US is the world leader in arrests and imprisonment), I am not even sure that is true.

Re:In other words,

[TheRaven64]

Why? Most people in both countries can live quite happily without ever being involved with the legal system (I've not been to Iran, but I have a few friends from there, so admittedly I'm only speaking based on second-hand information). In both cases, you can be imprisoned for quite ludicrous things (e.g. owning a specific quantity of a certain kind of plant in the USA). In both places, the state reserves the right to kill its citizens.

Re:In other words,

[poity]

He's reacting to the equivalence fallacies.
This is what happens on Slashdot every single time:

1. Some other country trespasses egregiously on human rights (e.g. death penalty for software unwittingly used by porn sites)
2. First comment says "this is no different than the USA", gets modded +5
3. Someone responds to that post with "that's not a fair comparison since the US reacts differently for [crime in topic]"
4. Someone like you twists #3's words around to frame him as an apologist with low standards when in fact he was calling out the non-sequitur for having no logical connection.
5. Someone chimes in about how this is a cultural phenomenon and we should sympathize with abusive foreign governments (to which I can only laugh because it begs the silly question: why doesn't the world sympathize with the abusive US government for reasons of cultural understanding?)

Yes of course you SHOULD be vigilant in policing the abuses by the government, but when you can no longer separate bad from worse, you will have lost all hope of separating good from bad. If you want a country to get better, then you better know exactly where it stands in relation to others, those which are better than it and those which are worse than it. Only what that self-knowledge can you seek to improve. Defeatist like #2 have neither the insight nor the inclination to improve a country.

Re:In other words,

[SecurityGuy]

It is credible. Hiking's not my passion, but in mine there are "places to go" that are considered way better that what you can find in the US. If you've advanced far enough in your sport and want to push the limits ever further, you have to go to places that are dangerous. The danger you intend to face is environmental, but the countries that happen to house them also contain political dangers, as in your country hates my country.

It's completely plausible. It's also possible they're spies, but it seems like a really dumb cover story. I don't speculate which is true because without direct info I can only say both are possible.

Re:In other words,

[anagama]

More than Gitmo, you can cite Al Awlaki, an American citizen we executed over making partisan videos. The new standard in America is free speech, so long as the Feds don't object to it.

Re:In other words,

[anagama]

Well actually, Obama just executed an American citizen (Al Awlaki) by drone attack without any evidence, not even a show trial, and it appears that the reason was posting partisan videos in which he talked smack about America. So at least in Iran you get a show trial before your execution. The fact that people look at this story and think "Iran is Evil" without thinking the same of the Feds, should create huge cognitive dissonance. That it does not, suggests to me that the civil liberties our country was founded on don't have much time for this world, at least not in America.

Re:In other words,

[TheRaven64]

Depends. How rich are you?

Re:In other words,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Great comparison between justice systems in Iran and USA. "

Buddy, you don't have the first clue about what REALLY goes on in the US "justice system".
I mean you have no fucking idea. All you "know" is what you have been told by the people who
want you to believe you live in a free and just society. Well, the truth runs counter to the idea that
the US is a free and just society.

I have done time in the US system.

In the US, torture does happen, to US citizens. It's called "diesel therapy". Ask any
prison guard about this phrase. There are also people who have been locked up for years
without a trial. The method used for this is for a judge to order the person sent to a prison
facility which has psychological "expertise". The person can be held there with no trial for
years, and his friends and family don't even know what has happened to him. Yes, this is terrifying,
and it is real. No, I don't have a citation, because the government makes it difficult to acquire
evidence about these things. But I will stake my life that everything I wrote is true.

Re:In other words,

[swillden]

Degree doesn't matter.

That is an utterly ludicrous statement. Degree absolutely does matter, there's a huge difference between killing someone and fining them, for example, even if both are abuses of human rights. The fact that one abuse is of lesser degree doesn't make it right, or acceptable, but it does mean that its less bad than the abuse of greater degree.

If my country tortures just one person, it's lost any kind of moral high ground from which to cast criticism

Now you've changed your argument from "degree doesn't matter" to "quantity doesn't matter". That I can agree with, not so much because quantity truly doesn't matter but because accepting a given degree of abuse in small quantities almost inevitable results in that abuse in greater quantity over time.

I do have to point out that there are different forms of torture, which constitute different degrees of abuse, however. None are acceptable, and I do not approve of my country engaging in torture at all, but there are still differences between playing loud music all night, waterboarding and flaying.

Re:In other words,

[cold fjord]

It works both ways.

Fact Sheet on the U.S.-UK Extradition Treaty

The numbers do not demonstrate imbalance:

The United States has not denied a single extradition request from the UK under the treaty. While the U.S. does send more extradition requests to the UK than it receives, this difference is largely due to the differences in the size of the respective populations. The panel report notes that the U.S. has a population about five times the size of the UK, but there have been fewer than twice the number of people extradited to the U.S. than to the UK. The number of U.S. requests is not disproportionate.

The standards are the same in practice:

All extradition requests between the U.S. and UK must meet the same evidentiary standard: probable cause. All requests from the U.S. must meet the standard of “reasonable suspicion” required under UK law. However, all requests from the U.S. must also be based on a charging document that meets the “probable cause” standard required under U.S. law. This is the same standard that the U.S. requires of extradition requests from the UK The panel reviewed the evidence and concluded: “There is no practical difference between the information submitted to and from the United States.”

Independent review of the United Kingdom's extradition arrangements

wow

[jmb1990]

...I've written some bad code in my time.. but not that bad.

We've had a similar case here in NL

[bytesex]

The question is: why oh why do all of these people go back to fscking Iran ?!

Re:We've had a similar case here in NL

[Anonymous Coward]

One day a guy was sleeping in the sun with his pants off, and the papa tapeworm and the baby tapeworm got out in the sun. It was a first for the baby, so it looked at everything with big eyes and started asking. Pa, pa, what is this big shiny blue dome? The sky, son, the sky. Pa, pa, what is this shiny yellow thing in the middle of the sky? The sun, son, the sun. Pa, pa, what is the beautiful green thing all around? A meadow, son, with flowers. Pa, pa, when there are so many beautiful things in the world, why do we live in this stinking hole? Motherland, son, motherland.

Re:We've had a similar case here in NL

[SuricouRaven]

In this case, family matters. His father was (still is?) terminally ill. He wanted to see his dying rather one more time while he still had the chance. A story worthy of a cheap soap, but in this case happens to be true.

Re:Savages

[qbast]

I don't remember Canada going to war when another of their citizens was captured and tortured by different bunch of savages on trumped-up charges. Why act differently now?

Pay attention to compiler warnings!

[PolygamousRanchKid]

You know, it's easy to just glaze over things like, "conversion from int to long," "unused variable," or "insulting and desecrating the principles of Islam." But it's better to fix them . . . it may save your life!

Re:Savages

[haruchai]

Not to mention that they were complicit in the rendition of another of their citizens into the hands of Syrian torturers.

Re:Savages

[MichaelSmith]

I think it is bizarre that Iran apparently has people who track the authors of software used to host pornography and associates it with their residency status and availability for arrest in Iran.

A Pitiful lot, these iranians and muslims

[Anonymous Coward]

So, a piece of software for photo uploading can damage islam? WHat a f*cking weak religion.

Looks more like maybe he was the sole inheritor of property of his father, and someone wanted him out of the picture. So they came up with the grand charge of 'insulting islam' and bribed some judges..

Tell me, according to these islamists, is there any person alive on earth (except those unwashed bearded mullas) who are not guilty of insulting islam some way or the other?

Heck, everyone connected with any part of internet would all be guilty of insulting islam and therefore target for murder, then.

Questions anunswered

[mapkinase]

1/ what's the name of the software (I tried to google him in various file extensions, but could not find him)
2/ list of websites that use it.

Campaign to help

[Lemming Mark]

There's a campaign to help this man: https://peoplewithoutnation.wordpress.com/

Most recently, there's an appeal to write to the Prime Minister of Canada, who hasn't yet spoken out in support of Saeed:
https://peoplewithoutnation.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/take-action-write-a-letter-to-stephen-harper-canadas-prime-minister/

The death sentence could be carried out imminently.

Saeed Malekpour was in Iran to visit his gravely ill father. He was waiting for Canadian citizenship and the Iranian regime are aiming to make an example of him, having tortured him and denied him due process. I think the Canadian government does have a particular moral duty to stand up for him under the circumstances, although really all democratic governments ought to oppose this sort of thing.

The Iranian regime seems to have an interest in intimidating the population (and making an example out of cases that are highly-publicised internally, such as this one) since there's an election coming up in March, as well as the general interest in keeping the population scared.

Amnesty also have some information on the case:
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/iran-must-halt-execution-web-programmer-2012-01-19

I'm just piecing together some information I've found here, I'm not connected to the case.

Re:Death penalty

[Anonymous Coward]

While religion can be destructive at times, it does do a lot of good. I'm an atheist, but stating that religion should not be allowed is a violation of human rights. Prosecuting every religion is the same as prosecuting just one, which is often what happens in countries like Iran. However, the death penalty definitely should be banned.

US versus Iran

[Okian Warrior]

Well, let's see here. Maybe not *in* the US, but *by* the US:

you can be gunned down by Apache helicopters for peacefully assembling
you can be thrown into indefinite jail on the word of a paid informant
If you are a foreign leader, you can be deposed and hung
or deposed and brought into the US to stand trial for breaking US laws
If you are a foreign citizen, you can be extradited and put in jail for breaking civil law
If you are a US citizen the president can have you killed by the CIA
You can be tortured by the US (for some definitions of torture)
You can be shipped to another country and tortured (for all definitions of torture)

I dunno, it's a tough choice. Is Iran worse than the US because it visits harsh penalties on a few people, or is the US worse because it's actions are milder but more widespread?

Because, as we know, we can only oppose one evil at a time. Comparing the relative evil helps us to make that choice.

Oh, and let's not forget China.