Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Iran's Forgotten Cyber Warrior

His name is Hossein Ronaghi Maleki, or as he was better known with his Noms de guerre on Facebook, Babak Khorramdin, the Iranian hero who resisted the Arab invaders from his castle in Badh,  for more than twenty years.

Hossein is an IT whiz kid, a genius who decided to use his intellect to serve his people in beating the government control on information and news censorship. During last year's post-election fraud protests, Hossein played a pivotal role in providing anti-filters and fresh updated proxies before the expected protest days, which were then quickly spread amongst Iran's cyber community to help the citizen journalists to show what was going on inside Iran to the world. His arrest became the intelligence ministry's top priority. The Supreme Leader, Khamanei, was the modern day Caliph, hell bent on capturing the modern day Babak, who was shaking the very foundations of his rule, from his cyber base trenches.

When the historic Babak was captured, the Abbassid Caliph,  Al-Mu'tassam, wanted to convey the most devastating message to Babak's followers by handing out the most barbaric punishment to Babak. The Caliph ordered his henchmen, to cut off Babak's legs and arms one by one and make him die of a slow death.

Babak bravely dabbed his face with the drained blood pouring out of his cuts, thus depriving the Caliph and the rest of the Abbasid army from seeing his face go pale as a result of the heavy loss of blood, so that they didn't get the impression he looked scared.

Since his capture, Hossein has been subjected to the most horrific tortures, and to make matters worse, he suffers from heart and kidney ailments. His brother Hassan was also imprisoned, even though Hassan had no role in any political activity. To put eve more pressure on Hossein in order to break him down, he was forced to watch his brother being tortured for a month, which led to Hassan suffering neck injuries.

The regime is denying Hossein much needed medical treatment. On the last occasion he had a telephone conversation with his mother, he could not finish his call because of constant severe coughing.

Hossein Ronaghi-Maleki, our modern day equivalent of Babak Khorramdin, is now on hunger strike, and is resisting all the regime's barbaric pressures to appear on state TV and make a false confession. He is dabbing his face with blood to deny the regime's henchmen the satisfaction that they have broken him down.

While so many people undeservedly are basking in receiving awards and acclaims without ever having contributed to breaking the internet censorship in Iran, with much hype on bogus non-existent anti-filter softwares, the true hero of Iran's cyber revolution, Hossein Ronaghi-Maleki remains forgotten and unattended but he is standing proud and resolute to the end.

1 comment:

Waybec said...

Well Babak Khoramdin deserves to be one of the true lions of Iran, and yet there are STILL those who will glorify the rabid, gluttonous statanic sheeps of Khamanei and Ahmanedinejad! Never mind... The current sanctions IS making the theocratic tyranny sweat no matter what they say! It's obvious. They fear a further strenghtening of a people's revolt! Personally, even if the dark regime ends up begging to lift the sanctions, I would still sustain them just to finally end this 14th century male hedonistic barbaric rule! People like Babak Khorramdin should be free and celebrated now. Not persecuted to the point of a horrible death just because Khamanei's spiteful and childish ego can't behave like a truly forgiving and intelligent adult! Azadi Khorrasmdin va Irani!