Tarek Baiassi, whom we’ve written about before, has finally been sentenced, by a Syrian “court” to three years in prison. According to the RSF, the legal-like glass for Tarek’s sentence included “publishing false news” and “weakening national sentiment,” whatever that is. The real reason for the sentence was his having posted an article on the shortcomings of the Syrian secret service on a forum.

Baiassi’s father was incarcerated by the Syrians as a political prisoner.

A petition for Baiassi’s release.

***

We discovered, through MidEast Youth, that journalist and blogger, Osama Edward Mousa, has been arrested by the Syrian authorities.

No one knows where he was taken or where he’s exactly imprisoned within Damascus, and his friends and family fear that he is undergoing torture. Osama is an Assyrian Christian. Apparently he was arrested directly due to content on his blog, where he criticized the Syrian government and its economic policies.

Can anyone confirm this?

Update: Facebook responds. Kind of.

***

Update: RSF is trying to find out how Moroccan prosecutors determined Mourtada’s indentity.

Reporters Without Borders wonders how the police identified Mourtada. “Did the police get his computer’s IP address? And if so, how? We have asked the ISP, Maroc Telecom, in which the French company Vivendi is a shareholder, to provide us with the relevant information.”

The CPB wonders as well. And, keeping Yahoo in mind, as well as Facebook’s response below, we wonder if the list of people to ask is one name shorter than it ought to be? Laila Lalami wonders the same thing, in The Nation.

How the Moroccan police found out Mourtada’s identity remains a bit of a mystery. They could have obtained his IP address from Facebook, or from his service provider, Maroc Telecom, or from an old-fashioned snitch. But the preliminary court hearing did not include details of the police investigation, so the possibility of corporate cooperation cannot be ruled out. After all, China cracked down on dissidents last year with the help of Yahoo.

***

We wondered how Facebook felt about the recent arrest and three year sentence of Moroccan Fouad Mourtada for his satirical Facebook page of his country’s crown prince. So we wrote them. What we got was, well, given the precendents set by Yahoo, Google and other American companies, it can hardly be called surprising. It was disheartening, though.

Here’s my first email to the PR department.

To Whom It May Concern:

Could I get someone at Facebook to comment on the recent arrest in Morrocco of Fouad Mourtada? As you no doubt know, satirical Facebook pages are rampant.

I would also be interested in Facebook’s position on the arrest of Facebook commenters in Lebanon and its ban in Syria and Iran.

I am asking for two reasons. I am the director of the Committee to Protect Bloggers and I am also taking part in a weekly conversation with PRI’s The World. Here’s that public radio show’s last Tech Podcast, in which I took part. The next time Clark Boyd and I talk I would like to be able to mention Facebook’s position on these issues.

Regards,
Curt Hopkins
Director
Committee to Protect Bloggers

I received a response, if you can call it that, from a Facebook representative named Jaime Schopflin.

Hi Curt,

Here is our statement on this:

“We do not comment on these specific situations. Under our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, Facebook may share information with law enforcement and other government agencies when it has a good faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.”

Please attribute this to a Facebook spokesperson.

Let me know if you have any other questions,

-Jaime

Well, that’s boilerplate nonsense. And it stank of expectation. Here’s our non-answer and you’ll report it like a good little collaborator. I decided instead to talk Jaime’s offer seriously and send some questions. Here they are.

Jaime:

Really? That’s it? No condemnation of the imprisonment of one of your users for making a joke? No condemnation of authorities known to use torture (such as Syria) for arresting your customers (sic-Lebanon arrested; Syria banned)? No condemnation of censorship? No advocacy for the free speech that makes your service, site and business possible in the first place? In a morally unambiguous situation such as the suborning of communications for the preservation of personal power no comment except “no comment”? When students in Lebanon are arrested no expression of fellow-feeling or solidarity based on the fact that Facebook could not have been possible were it not for a) free speech and b) an engaged student population?

I’m very disappointed in this response, Jaime, and in Facebook. I hope someone higher up decides that it is incumbent on them to distinguish themselves from companies like Yahoo and Google. In the meantime, I’ll accept this as your answer. (And as to instructing me in how to attribute this “quote” of yours, don’t.)

Best wishes,
Curt Hopkins

I got the same response from a different PR person, Malorie Lucich, from an outside agency called Outcast.

Hi Curt,
Thanks for your email. Here is Facebook’s statement on the issue:

“We do not comment on these specific situations. Under our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, Facebook may share information with law enforcement and other government agencies when it has a good faith belief it is legally obligated to do so.”

Please attribute to Facebook or a Facebook spokesperson.

Best,
Malorie

This is ridiculous PR boobery, especially for a company that provides a product for radical communication and connection. Do you think they’ll find their voice, if not their souls, if a great many more people ask the same questions? It’s worth a try.

Here’s Facebook’s general PR email address: press@facebook.com. Here’s Jaime’s email address: jaimes@facebook.com And here’s Malorie’s: malorie@outcastpr.com.

Update: RSF reports that Baiasi is being tried on March 17. The whimsical “charges” brought against him are “undermining national sentiment” and “publishing false information.” “Undermining national sentiment” is the most Disney of all the fake charges that we’ve seen used by tinhorns the world over. This overtakes even “insulting Turkishness” in the Idiot Grand Prix. 

***

According to Mideast Youth, blogger Tarek Baiasi, who was arrested on July 30 of last year in the city of Tartous, as part of a crackdown on online comments, has still not been heard of since his detention.

Baiasi was arrested “for a comment he left on one of the forums called ‘I am a Muslim’ in which he presented the advantages and the disadvantages of the Syrian security forces policies.” His house was searched and he was taken away. He never appeared in open court and is said to be held in “the Palestine Camp’s security branch” in Damascus. (Not sure what that means. Anyone?)

Tarek’s father was arrested in the 1970s, when Tarek was only a few months old, and sentenced to 20 years in prison for allegedly being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, an outlawed Islamic organization.

Baiasi runs the risk of being yet another detained blogger all but unknown outside of his country. Let’s spread the word about him.

We know about you. You haven’t been forgotten. You won’t be forgotten.

***

Update: Brian responds via Twitter, “there is a large refugee camp the ‘mochai’em yarmouk’ for palestinians in DAM, syrian govt also supports PFLP could be them holding hm”.

Forecast Highs, the blog by Jerusalem Post news editor Amir Mizroch, has posted this graphic, by Ricky Ben-David, of a theoretical Facebook page that Syria might have.

If you have graphics of what other countries’ Facebook pages might look like, please send them to us so we can post them or leave the URL in the comments.

(OK. That turned into gibberish. What’s a guy gotta do to post in Arabic around here?)

Update: Verified, see comments. Thanks Hazem and Kevin.

We received an anonymous tip regarding Facebook in Syria.

i just wanted to tell you that facebook.com has been banned in syria as well a
few hours ago, i wish you can investigate/post/publish something about it
please.

If anyone can verify, or debunk this, please do.

There is a report in Arabic on blocked sites that clearly identifies YouTube as one of the blocked sites. Also, there are several public reports referring to directives from the Syrian Ministry of Information prohibiting Syrians from publishing any webposts on an anonymous basis and threatening legal actions against all Syrian sites that publish anonymous reports.

This led me to ask a specialist in Internet filtering a question which I will ask again here.

In addition to ascertaining which countries block which kinds of speech on which type of platforms (blogging, online sites, etc.), can we also determine which specific proprietary instruments are blocked? By this I mean specific products and services, such as YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Blogger and so on.

If you know part of the answer, let us know. Do you know of a specific product that is blocked or banned in a specific country?

Update: The rationale for the blocking YouTube in Syria is apparently the posting there of a satirical video featuring the First Lady as Marlyn Monroe, Seven Year Itch-style, with her dress blown up, bidding farewell to a foreign dignitary at the airport with her husband.