Iranian writer is sentenced to 12 years after tweeting a dot at supreme leader

I neither study this subject, nor watch it closely. And I can imagine anything. But until I see real facts of such arrests, I will stay in doubt. And will continue reading whatever I want.

This doesn't matter. "Guilty until proven innocent" is not exclusively a legal concept. Furthermore, you're making this opinion about a legal case, so even if it was exclusively a legal concept, you'd still be making an opinion about what should happen in a court of law.

> 2. He already plead guilty to his crime and been convicted, hes no longer in the "innocent until proven guilty" phase

This demonstrates a lack of experience with the real world, as it's very common for innocent people to plead guilty. This is trivially verifiable with quick internet searches[1]. Ergo, this claim is false - guilty plea status is irrelevant, especially if we're discussing the merits of the case or verdict.

> 3. Calling for violence wasn't even the crime he was convicted of. That was "publishing written material to stir up racial hate" [1].

That's even worse. If you read the definition of the law:

> A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if—

> (a)he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or

> (b)having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

...you'd see that it's far less clear and more subjective than calling for violence.

> Personally I think it should, because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging.

This is a non-argument because "Stirring up racial hatred" doesn't mean anything. The law is written so broadly that it can be interpreted to mean almost anything. It's also a concept almost exclusively used by the UK government that is used to prosecute political opponents with zero clear harm identified. And, the concept is exclusively legal, not moral/ethical - if you ask a random person on the street of any country what "stirring up racial hatred" means, you'll get wildly different answers, and more than a few confused looks. This also means that "stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging" doesn't mean anything, because you can't even quantify the meaning of the phrase, which makes assessing effects/damage completely impossible.

Even if you're acting in genuinely good faith (which is not the case in the UK) and only personally intend to use this law to prosecute people who are calling for violence (which is already illegal), it's extremely clear that the law is so broadly-written that it can be used against your political opponents (or, you, in case the party in power changes).

Not-so-ironically, you can see the exact same situation in the HN submission article - "Shanbehzadeh was sentenced to five years for alleged pro-Israel propaganda activity, four years for insulting Islamic sanctities, two years for spreading lies online and an additional year for anti-regime propaganda."

Like "stirring up racial hate", none of those terms mean anything (except what the state wants them to mean when it wants them to mean it in a legal context to persecute opponents), all of them are extremely broadly applicable, and all of them are actively being used by the state to suppress speech it doesn't like. You can take your statement "Personally I think [publishing written material to stir up racial hate] should [be illegal], because stirring up racial hatred is pretty damaging." and swap out the nouns and get "Personally I think spreading lies online should be illegal, because lies are pretty damaging" and you've just justified what the state of Iran did with exactly the same logic.

[1] https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2021/may/15/study-sho...

The author of your link argues that the biased reporters are not necessarily evil. I think this is not the main concern for a reader. His main goal is to build a world view as adequate to reality as possible.

My take on how to approach that as a news consumer: https://avodonosov.blogspot.com/2024/09/scientific-method-fo...

Of course, some reporters are genuinely mistaken despite trying to do best reporting. Others are intentionally manipulative - no doubt that happens often too. But even they can think it is for good. And I agree with your author we should not translate this into hostility in the society by declaring all biased reporters as evil. But we can note their quality.

Speaking of npr.org, I can not decide conclusively from this single example whether they stay in the "decent quality" category. But it suggests they are ready to compromise on quality. It's not only the title that is misguiding. The article body is not keen to make the things clear. I suppose many readers left with a firm belief the man was really sentenced for the dot posted alone.

The photo is irrelevant and could easily be left out, but why is it a disservice to Hossein Shanbehzadeh?

> I agree that NPR is regurgitating the narrative by "Iran International English", but to me the body of the article is crystal clear, this guy was an activist, and this particular "ratio-ing" was a likely trigger that led to him being included in this batch of people "to be made example of".

I have never heard of "Iran International". And in general I know very little about Iran. Some caricature mentions (https://youtu.be/g2KsZHRrFpU?t=88, https://youtu.be/9EDkTAaUMDU?t=1055), a brief approach to the wikipedia article sometime long ago, islamic revolution, head scarfs... The link got me curious about the level of opposing actions suficient to be prosecuted in Iran. I tried to search for Hossein Shanbehzadeh's original social media posts made after his release from the previous sentence - that's the biggest missing part for me. Failed to find them - the twitter account was deactivated, other social media didn't show up in the search results for "Hossein Shanbehzadeh". But there are several pages in google search results of other news sites posting the same story. So may be the media not repeating "Iran International" directly, but simply racing to repeat each other and publish this sensational message, withouth giving too much dilligence and thinking?

BTW, Uzbek branch of Radio Libery reports that:

"According to the lawyer, the prosecution did not prove to the guilt of Shanbehzade under the most difficult article. As evidence of guilt under other articles, the court cited his posts in support of political prisoners and the abolition of the mandatory wearing of the hijab, the use of the hashtag #NoToExecutions, criticism of the Iranian elections and the expression of joy about the death of former President Ebrahim Raisi.

[..]

As Iran International notes, critics of the Iranian regime often use the point and other single symbols to express disagreement with the authorities."

https://rus.ozodlik.org/a/33103899.html (auto translated from russion to english).

> We don't have high-certainty information about the proximate causes that landed this guy in prison, but it doesn't matter (it matters for scholars if they are doing some kind of deep dive on crackdowns, and of course it matters for actual people on the ground, who are trying to contest the charges, but even then the statistics is not kind to their efforts).

Why the real reasons do not matter for usual readers? They very much matter, I think.

> I think NPR is providing a disservice by reporting the actual "charges" he was found guilty of in 2020, because they don't matter.

You mean 2024. The info about the formal official charges makes the picture more complete.

Wait... Do you value the quality of the article not by its informativeness for the reader, but by level of "service" it makes to Hossein Shanbehzadeh?

Wow! I don't know if that's really your position, but that's a mind blowing possibility!

> It's a brutal dictatorship, of course there are laws against criticizing the government ("anti-regime propaganda", and of course anyone can be charged with treason-lite (pro-Israel propaganda) and ... it's a theocracy, of course there are blasphemy laws, yeey!

Do you mean the Iranian regime is a-priori evil, so everyone prosecuted by it is a-priori good and suffers undeservedly. Therefore decent media just need to mobilize public support for them, even if falsifying / concealing the reality from the readers? (Even if the premises was true, such reasoning conclusion is wrong).

> And ... when it comes to what to do with this as a news consumer, the sad fact is that this is not news. There's zero new bit of actionable information in this. (NPR published this because "Iran International" published this on 31 Aug, the "trial" was apparently on 7th of August. He tweeted in June, and was released from prison sometime around April in 2023. Wikipedia says 2024, but it's likely wrong.)

The information may be not immediately actionable, but as a news consumer I want to build adequate worldview, which may form the ground for decisions and actions in the future.