NCRI – Iranian regime has decreed that linking a website to Facebook or Twitter is now a criminal offense.
The social networking sites, along with many other western websites, were already blocked by the mullahs ruling in Iran.
But millions of Iranians still managed to get around the ban by disguising their location in the country with special software.
Now the ruling mullah’s have ordered that all websites remove links to Facebook and Twitter – including several government sites and an official state news agency which had the links.
The ruling was made under Article 21-Item D of Iran’s cyber crime code which relates to ‘general comfort and security’ on the Internet.
It was not stated what the punishment would be for accessing the sites, but last November Facebook activist Sattar Beheshti died in custody after being arrested by the Iranian cyber police for criticizing the regime on his blog.
Facebook and Twitter were both used by the population in 2009 to organize massive street protests against the regime, which were eventually stamped out by security forces.
It emerged in February last year that despite the ban, Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Khamenei had his own Facebook page.
Reuters news agency said at the time that the page named ‘Khamenei.ir’, with speeches and photos of the 73-year-old cleric ‘appeared to be genuine’.
The page can be found on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/www.Khamenei.ir?fref=ts
