back to article Iranian web developer faces death over porn site charges

An Iranian web developer faces the threat of execution over allegations he helped develop and promote pornographic websites in the strict Muslim country. Saeed Malekpour, 35, only confessed to the "trumped up" offences after he was tortured The Guardian reports. Malekpour, a resident of Toronto, was arrested in October 2008 on …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Iran

    Can't their national firewall block porn sites ?

    The kids in the country need support for a proper revolution; it's a very young nation ruled by autocratic religious mullahs. Without support, any revolution will simply be met with ruthless force.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Troll

    a little harsh....

    but I assume he has documentation to show his only connection to the porn is that he wrote a script....

    It really makes me wonder though, if all he did was to write a script how did the powers that be find out his personal details enough to arrest him on entry to Iran?

    I know its a bit over the top hanging for this type of offense by our western standards but in islam pornography is just as offensive as Paedophilia is in the western world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No...

      "... in islam pornography is just as offensive as Paedophilia is in the western world..."

      No, no it isn't. They don't like it, but it's nothing like that offensive.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A title is required

    "crackdown on indecent websites which Iran's mullahs reckon are corrupting the nation's youth"

    As opposed to all the "murder the infidels", "stone rape victims to death", "strap a bomb to yourself" stuff, drilled into them from birth, which is just clean, wholesome fun.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    These Iranians are almost as bad as the US Americans

    Torturing, executing, trying to apply their own laws to the whole world ...

    1. ian 22
      Coat

      3 hangings/day?

      God is great, human beings not so much.

      Mine's the one with the rope in the pocket.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Just a thought...

    Not to make too light of this chap's terrible predicament, but would flagellation count as porn in Iran? If so, there are some serious double-standards going on when it comes to their favourite form of public entertainment.

    1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

      Re: Just a thought

      Not to mention the behaviour of the police in "extracting" confessions from "suspects". (Does anyone here seriously believe that they don't queue up to "interrogate" suspected adulteresses?)

      But we already knew all this. The whole authority structure in Iran is criminally insane by the standards of their own professed religion just as much as by any Western point of reference.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Stupid mullahfuckers

    I develop software for adult websites all the time, the mullahs can kiss my ass !

    1. Mr Tumnus

      Sigh

      Says the Anonymous Coward ...

  7. hj
    WTF?

    coincidence?

    That all comments are from anonymous cowards?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: coincidence?

      Well apart from "Mr Tumnus" and of course yourself, "hj".

  8. MinionZero
    Stop

    "developer faces death" - religion showing its true caring side once again.

    So very sadly we have news of yet another poor sod being lined up to be killed, by the oh so caring religious leaders.

    /Disclaimer: I've had enough of hearing about poor sods about to be killed, so I'm not going to censor my word. Its time for gloves off, deep breath, I'm going in!...

    So once again like so many religions throughout history, the caring religious leaders call for the death of someone (and yet all their followers dare not question their leaders true motives. Oh no, can't have that, after all, their leaders speak the word of god, so their words must be so sacred you can't question the leaders true motives. After all their leaders wouldn't lie and manipulate would they, oh no. After all, you can't get much more Narcissistic behaviour than someone who claims their words are literally the words of god!, that they speak for god and so they are beyond question and you must never question them, oh no. Two faced bastards the lot of them.

    The low end lowly leaders, the less successful ones are the attention seeking Narcissists (usually passive aggressive NPD & HPD), these leaders stand up in front of their audiences and call them sheep, their flock and they want their flock to follow them and follow their words, their words of wisdom, oh but its not their words, its the words of god, they just tell you (and generations like them) what the words of god are. The high end, the most powerful leaders are nothing less than outright Psychopaths and some of them are more than willing to kill, as history has shown, sadly all too often. Don't believe me, just look at the abuse scandals in the Catholic church, another powerful religion, but don't just look at the abuse scandals, look at the numbers of abuse cases and then try to tell me they don't have Psychopaths within their ranks. Psychopaths with no empathy what so ever for their victims. Yet we are expected to hold these people up as leaders, as role models of empathy!

    Religious leaders welcome to the 21st century, welcome to the Internet where information can spread, where we no longer have to listen to your two faced, lying, deceitfully Machiavellian manipulative words without others highlighting the hypocrisy of their actions. Oh so caring Religious leaders, bullshit!.

    So now the deceived cult followers have yet another very public lesson in obedience from their religious masters and so sadly one more is lined up to be killed. :( ... kill someone, then make others fearful of being next, good way to keep people in line. (By the way, @hj, very good point about so many AC comments).

    Anyone who is religious, its like the old saying, "the truth hurts" ... but at least you're now seeing a glimpse of freedom from the words of your masters.

    As you can tell, I'm an Atheist. Well after the pope's visit (small p intentional, I will not show him or mullahs or any like them any reverence because that's what their kind want (and by kind I refer to Passive Aggressive Narcissists as Narcissists want reverence (in the popes case, perfectly happy to let millions die of Aids, but oh so caring, oh yes, bullshit!))) same two faced pattern time and time again from these cult leaders and as for the pope hypocritically calling us Atheists Nazis, (when he was a Nazis FFS!). Well from now on, I'm not going to censor any of my words about any Religion, (that's a 20th century thing). mullahs, welcome to the Internet age!. (All the religious leaders are all playing the same game, well enough). Now I'm going to say it like it is, until these cult leading bastards stop trying to rule over people with a pack of lies to cover over their personality disorders and keep on causing the deaths of people (and they will be stopped, when people stop following them! ... which is what they fear).

    If you are currently a religious follower and you don't like your leaders true motives questioned and what I've said here, well tough, get things into perspective, another poor sod is about to be killed!!!, one amongst so many to die needlessly, and if you still don't like what I've said, well what I've said here is nothing compared with a full psychological profile of what I could say about religious leaders. If you don't like it, you can always turn off the Internet, after all that's what these leaders really want you to do, just listen to them and only them, so all the censorship moves are just playing into that true goal. This isn't just about porn to the leaders, its about power and censorship and control. After all the leaders don't want their followers to hear things that can call into question their leaders true motives. Tough, we are in the Internet age now!

    I very much hope the guy gets free, but sadly I very much doubt it. :(

    1. Steven Knox
      Flame

      *SIGH*

      Pot, kettle.

      It's not "religion" that's the problem; it's the human preference for foisting one's own opinion on others -- much like you're doing here.

      Many posters on this site have advocated atheism, most for similar reasons, some in a similarly militant fashion but all in a much more succinct and logically valid format.

      I despise internet memes, but this one is far too appropriate to your post to avoid: tl;dr

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        @ *SIGH*

        Close...

        Religion is nothing more than a mechanism, one among many, for foisting your preferences onto others. You are also very correct though that even the supposed lack of belief, atheism, is guilty of this.

        There is a *very* good point though which is stated but not made clear in that these major religions are based around caring and respect - murdering people is not exactly part of this remit. They are also based around spreading their faith to the exclusion of other faiths - which in logical terms is essential to the survival of a religion but generally contradictory to the caring and respect aspects but such things as utter lack of logic and contradictions are what most faiths are made of.

        If you take a step back and look at these things in a broader picture, religions are or have been very good at keeping societal cohesion which is critical for the development of civilisation. They're not the only mechanism though, laws, class structures, education, nationhood and the like are others, but they are an important factor. And this comes right back to the first point - it's all about control and foisting your opinion on others.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Nick

          In Islam, followers are forbidden to try to convert Christians or Jews, this is a specific instruction from Mohamed (PBUH), of course a lot of militant Islamists don't actually seem to actually know their own religion that well.

          As an aside, the people in Iran really don't like the executions for petty "crimes" against Islam, they are deeply unpopular and exclusively driven by the state and the religious leaders. There is a pretty big difference between normal Muslims, the Ayatollahs and and state. A lot of people (and I'm not including you) don't seem to be able to separate the actions of militant Islam from normal Muslims. Some of the bigotry seen in various forums, Internet, TV, Radio, Newspapers, is genuinely shocking to me and many others who don't want to see Islam take over the world, but don't really mind if they practice their religion in peace.

      2. Big-nosed Pengie

        title

        "It's not "religion" that's the problem; it's the human preference for foisting one's own opinion on others -- much like you're doing here."

        No, it's religion.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @Big nosed pengie

          Ok, let's take a leaf out of Dawkin's book - I'll define atheism to be a religion because of the fervor with which its followers adhere to it, then we can all be right.

          But, no, it's not a religion but militant atheists are just as bad at pushing their ideals onto others as most fundamentalist theists.

      3. MinionZero
        Stop

        @Steven Knox: "tl;dr" (Too long; didn't read) Ok I be brief

        Thank you for admitting you didn't read it. That's a perfect example of the problem. Refuses to read, cannot learn you are wrong, so carry on believing you are right, try disproving that one, you are the perfect recruit for the religious leaders lies. I noticed you will read short comments, but then you can remain superior as you can see areas they ignore, but a long post, well the only way to deal with that, is to ignore it, as its much harder to overturn. Don't believe me, then read the whole of my post. After all, religion won't end by my comments, but news stories like this one and a myriad of others on the Internet are eroding more supporters from their leaders, and the more that happens the more society gets nearer finally dealing with the hidden harm the religious leaders are causing behind the backs of their supporters. Ironically the followers would be so ashamed of what is being done by their support of their leaders, give the leaders a position to abuse others, but then you didn't read my previous post as you said, so you don't know the details.

        p.s. Steven Knox, I noticed your superior attitude, I didn't react to it, but that’s also how they manipulate, make you think you have superior knowledge over all us unbelievers who know nothing, yet they are deceiving you into a way of thinking and ignoring the views of others, which they know would overturn their words.

        Meanwhile as this news shows, another man sadly faces death, all because the religious leaders have power due to their supporters. :( … Hey Steven, do the Christian thing, help end the abuse!, but then you didn't read my words. (No problem, the Internet will get to you in time).

      4. Loyal Commenter Silver badge
        FAIL

        @Steven Knox

        You appear to have conflated person A telling person B what they believe and person A telling person B what TO believe. For this, you fail.

  9. PassiveSmoking
    Unhappy

    Responsibility

    So if you write software in Iran you can be held liable to the extent of even your life if someone else decides to use your software for a purpose they didn't like. If the authors of Wordpress or Bittorrent were Iranian they'd de dead a thousand times over by now.

    As a professional programmer and an advocate of open source this is quite utterly appalling to me.

  10. g e

    Edit profile

    Religious views:

    Too many people die from it

  11. Smelly Socks
    Pint

    web site address?

    Sorry, but what URL did you say this bloke worked on? I want to check to see just how unislamic it is...

    -ss

    [beer, because beer is unislamic too]

  12. Someone Else Silver badge
    Alert

    Message to all Iranians w/ IQ >= 60:

    Run! Get out while you can!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Err...

      Have you actually been watching the news at all? Did you see the protests after the stolen election last year? Do you think that the people are happy about what is happening in their name? Do you think they want to be beaten in the street for asking for free and fair elections? Do you think they like seeing public executions for petty crime?

      Get a grip man, this isn't about intelligence, it's about an authoritarian ruling class exercising control over it's people.

  13. Thomas 4
    FAIL

    Deja vu....

    This reminds me of the SHAMELESS SLEEZEMONGER that worked on CHILDRENS WEBSITES according to that reliable bastion of news, the Hull Daily Mail:

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/04/hull_daily_mail/

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Where's good 'ol...

    Where's good 'ol Dubya when you need him? Look! They've got weapons of mass destruction, oil AND they're violating human rights. When do we start the party?

    1. HFoster

      Never, apparently

      The War On Terror (pile of old shit, IMHO) appears to have been more about Dubya proving himself to his dad than WMD, freedom, safety, oil, or anything else.

      Unless Obama opts to only Change the goals of Dubya's war, Iran is pretty safe from military action for now. Frankly, American foreign policy has NEVER been about Doing The Right Thing, AFAICT. Vietnam, Korea - they seemed to only move to curtail the spread of Communism (great success!). Big friends with Israel, never intervening in the interest of Human Rights. Illegal trade imbargo against Cuba. Self-serving Middle Eastern actions (interestingly, they did Sweet Fuck All about Iraqi Kurds being gassed and machine gunned by the Iraqi government).

      But the worst part is that Europe, Britain in particular, seems to only ask How high, Sir? when the US commands us to jump. Shame on us.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Iron age thinking from...

    ....iron age belief systems.

    It's so sad.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Poor bugger

    If the experience of Bill Sampson is anything to go by, the Canadian government will do sod all to help and plenty to make things worse.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like