State-run TV in Iran broadcast the “televised confessions” of 11 people jailed for posting jokes about Khomeini, the clerical regime’s founder, on social networking site.
The Iranian regime’s Revolutionary Guards Corp Commander Esmaeel Mohebipour declaring their arrest in late September said the individuals had published comments insulting Khomeini on WhatsApp, Viber, Tango and Telegram.
The news of arrests come a day after Iran’s Prosecutor General Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei issued a one-month ultimatum for the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to ban the applications WhatsApp, Viber and Tango.
Mohseni Ejei said the offensive comments under the guise of jokes about Khomeini had been widely circulated on the Viber, Tango and WhatsApp networks in recent weeks.
The video aired showed 11 young man whose faces are blurred stating that by posting jokes about Khomeini, they wanted to have fun and they “did not know about the severity of such act.”
Extracting “televised confessions” from prisoners under torture and duress is a common method that the clerical regime has used over the past 30 years.
This practice regime is hated by the Iranians. Several former political prisoners who were forced to make such ‘confessions’, when released said that the false confessions were extracted under torture.
In the same broadcast Esmail Mohebbi-Pour, the commander of the IRGC in Fars province (southern Iran) said that” sophisticated tracing techniques “were used to identify and arrest these individuals.
During the televised confessions, one of those arrested said that often he transferred SMS he had received from other people, without taking the time to read the content of the SMS.
Kamal Hadifar, the head of the Iranian regime Cyberpolice responsible for monitoring activities on Internet, said Sunday, Oct. 12 that the departments under his authority control all users’ activities in social networks including “Viber” and “WhatsApp”.
Scores of online activists, users and bloggers have been jailed and tortured and killed for comments about Iran’s ruling dictators, which have always been a common way to express their dissent.
The jokes about Khomeini reflect common criticisms of the regime’s policies and hollow promises, including his pledge to provide free water and electricity.
One joke said ‘Khomeini comes home and sees bills for water, electricity, and gas on the ground. He asks, ‘Weren’t these free?’
The joke concludes: “Forgetfulness was one of Imam’s weaknesses.”