This is not good ...

An Iranian blogger has been arrested in Iran and charged with spying for Israel. He could face the death penalty if found guilty. Hossein Derakhshan, known around the world as the father of the Iranian blogosphere, was recently arrested upon returning to Iran from Canada.

Jahan News, an Iranian website affiliated with Iran’s intelligence community, reported on Monday that he admitted to spying for Israel. Derakhshan, a 33-year-old secular Iranian, has been living in Toronto for the past seven years and holds Canadian citizenship. It was in Toronto that he started writing his blog, Hoder, in both English and Persian. Derakhshan has participated in many international forums as a representative of the younger Iranian generation.

... I met Hossein a few years ago in Paris which makes this story all the more real and worrying:

Hat tip to Alan Moore

Comments

[christianhauck]

awful if true. In the west we're concerned about bloggers losing their job (and rightly so) but loosing your head is a different dimension. And even if he survives - it's a threat meant to silence others.
I live in Freiburg - the only german city with an official partnership with an iranian city (http://www.freiburg-isfahan.de/). It's tough - but still worthwhile - to keep contact with others.

[jakbop]

I'd like to know if he was a spy for israel, because if so, that's despicable, given corruption. If he is, then I hope he is punished with a severe rebuke, a term of anti-terrorism training , like the Saudi model, like how to be a good citizen without resorting to spying for corrupt branches of foreign governments, and other terrorist groups, etc.
He might better be shown kindness, and correction, with better rewards than sleazy incentives of agent provocateurs.

[Euan]

This is more about a regime silencing dissenting voices than anyone being a terrorist Jakbop.

[john plum]

Euan, it's good to care, but what makes you think so, other than the
fact that it is Iran, and was perhaps reported in that tone.
The fact we know, is a mere fact of arrest.
That he might be...put to death... is merely a slur against the Iraninan governement.
H emight choke on a chiken bone, MOssad my eleiminate him when he gets home.
The fact tha he is a blogger doesn't make him innocent blogging is blogging. Spying is spying. He' snot being tried for blog ging. He' sb eing tried for spying. They are different things.
If he were also known as a juggler, or father of childern, juggler,
what would you suppose - that Iran hated father , jugglers and children? If guilty. he's putting all families in peril.
It's not a case of we are good they a re bad, the hairier or darker or more foreign they are, adn mMOssad are more like us!
It's a case of right and wrong.
Spying against a peoplle's governm,ent to sestabilise it
is treachery, meaning you don't give a shit about the people.
It's not fanciful, becuase it happenedthat the KHmeni regime
1 st prime minister, after th ecoup, was arrested for spying for Mossad.

Man we live in a very wicked world of assassins and false flags.
Innocents suffer, through the absolute disrespect for life that these
agents of War Industry Provocateurs have.
Be fair. DOn't run with the innuendo.
If the man is a spy, and if a seasoned spy, better f rhim, to put him to death.
HOw can you live such a worthless life.

They haven't arrested him for bl;ogging or dissenting.
I don't think there's law against dissenting. Dissenting goes on all the
time everywhere, except her ein the West the West when we are told what to think
about Iran, before we bomb them with the same nuclear or chemical
weapons used in Iraq and Gaza.

Fact; Iran has been raped and bombed and spied upon by America,
and Briatin has abstaned form condemming such acts at the UN,
as one the 'Big Memers'..our government condeoned slaughte of millions
through British gas and mines .
THis was whilst mossaad and american spie sswarmed in ,
and because America was booted out for suporting a regime of
extorting, rascist, totalitarian and carelss proportions.
Because we are compilicit in this, we don't come clean, no we carry on smearing them. We would rather drop nuclear bombs on them than say sorry.
man, some jews may have had a bad time I grant you in the
second world war, but is that worse than Iranians now (if it's true that 1 ( certanly not six) million jews died of diseas, pus whatever.....).

A spy is a spy is a traitor. End of story, a man who works for a destablising foreign agency. Not a dissenter, WHy strettch words? What' s in it for you?
DOn't fool yourself be plain. A spy is a spy working for someone else?
Who? Mossad!
Look, carry on, do care and go with Truth.

John.