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Student's satirical Facebook posts land his Iranian father in jail

Student's satirical Facebook posts land his Iranian father in jail

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After he posted on a satirical Facebook page while studying abroad, Yashar Khameneh's father was arrested by the Iranian security services

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Iranian Facebook page (cropped)
Iranian Facebook page (cropped)

An Iranian man is being detained by the country's security services after his son posted on a Facebook page mocking a sacred religious leader, according to a report from CNN. Yashar Khameneh was studying in the Netherlands when he began posting on the page, featuring a jokey image of Ali al-Naqi al-Hadi, one of Iran's 12 "infallible" imams. Traffic to the page spiked when Iranian-German rapper Shahin Najafi was issued with a fatwa for mocking the same imam, bringing it to the attention of the government, and Khameneh's father was arrested in May. With little prospect of his release on the horizon, it looks like Uzbekistan isn't the only country to consider "Facebook user" to be synonymous with "dangerous terrorist" — read the CNN report for the full story of Khameneh's father's arrest and his ongoing campaign.