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Exclusive: Jailed Iranian Activist Pleads to Elon Musk to Support Protests in New Audio Recording

GETTY IMAGES / WIRED
GETTY IMAGES / WIRED

A prominent Iranian activist currently jailed in one of Iran’s notoriously brutal prisons is openly calling for Twitter CEO Elon Musk to help Iranians in a new audio recording obtained exclusively by The Foreign Desk.

Ali Moussanejad Farkoosh, a political activist who was first arrested by Islamic Republic forces in June of 2019, described the current movement inside Iran in a call from Rajai Shahr Prison in Karaj, calling on Musk, specifically, as the person who can help Iranians in their endeavor by providing appropriate technology for Iranians to topple the regime.

More specifically, Farkoosh describes how “the child-killing terrorist regime in Iran, by cutting off internet access cuts the free flow of information of Iranians to the outside world,” and by outlining Musk’s various accomplishments in technology, calls on the entrepreneur and innovator to specifically provide satellite internet access using “special hardware and software.”

Farkoosh supports his claim by saying an INTRANET platform would be easy, fast, inexpensive and most importantly, anonymous.

The Foreign Desk has reported on the protests in Iran that have now entered the fourth month following the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini at the hands of Iran’s morality police for merely showing some of her hair under her hijab.

Since September, regime forces have used violent and brutal tactics in cracking down on protesters, including using surveillance technology to spy on Iranians using social media platforms and text messaging to organize. 

In June 2019, the Islamic Revolutionary Court of Tehran sentenced Farkoosh to eight years in prison on charges of "assembly and collusion to act against national security, an offensive statement against the current and former supreme leaders of Iran, and propaganda against the regime." 

In November 2020, he was sentenced to Rajai Shahr Prison, where he launched a hunger strike and refused to take medicine to demand freedom for political prisoners in Iran.

Farkoosh noted the widespread strike and protests occurring throughout the country and that technology has helped increase the "magnitude of these protests by different means and tactics with each passing day while facing violent suppression, imprisonment, and executions."

Like many other jailed Iranian dissidents, Farkoosh stressed that creating a network and voice using "the Reuters app or another similar app provides the capability of securely transmitting up-to-the-moment news under the present conditions and until the creation of a democratic state in Iran."

At the end of his audio recording, Farkoosh told Musk that a free Iran, after the demise of the Islamic Republic, would "provide Starlink with an immense financial windfall."

"As Hakim Omar Khayyam of Iran once said over 1,000 years ago up from Earth's Center through the Seventh Gate Rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; and many a Knot unraveled by the Road; But not the master-knot of Human Fate with wishes for world peace and prosperity," said Farkoosh.

In response to the protests, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi have blamed Western countries and Israel for supporting the protests to overthrow the regime. 

Human rights organizations report that hundreds of Iranian protesters are being brutally beaten, tortured, and killed throughout prisons and streets. In response to the brutal crackdowns, the European Union (EU) and the U.S. have enacted a series of sanctions targeting Iranian officials and the regime's security apparatus.

Related Story: U.S. Treasury Hints Elon Musk’s SpaceX Can Export Internet Equipment to Iran

Related Story: Islamic Republic Targeting Protesters on Social Media Using Chinese Surveillance

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