Schadenfreude alert: Turkish creationist gets three-year sentence


Tape up your face to keep from smiling too broadly, schadenfreude being a sin or close to it.

Turkish creationist, bully and general gluteal carbuncle Adnan Oktar got sentenced to three years in prison yesterday, for the crime of creating an illegal organization for personal gain.

Adnan Oktar in October 2007 - on his yacht?

You remember Oktar: He’s the guy who publishes all those nasty anti-evolution and anti-science books, steals photos for his high-cost, low-information “atlas” of creationism, and successfully sued to shut down this blog’s availability in Turkey (Well, this blog and two million others on WordPress).

Reuters has a story on the affair:

A spokeswoman for his Science Research Foundation (BAV) confirmed to Reuters that Oktar had been sentenced but said the judge was influenced by political and religious pressure groups.

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

Oh, yeah — those political and religious pressure groups. And Oktar’s high dollar bullying of government authorities — what is that?

European, and Turkey, laws against political views may trouble one, justly. In a perfect world, there would be no need for such things, with good and true ideas having a good shot at winning in a fair fight. Oktar specializes in the sort of thuggery that makes a fight for ideas unfair. We might hope this latest action will simply help keep the playing field even, level and fair.

Resources:

The news is oddly silent about this otherwise.

Tip of the old scrub brush to The Sensuous Curmudgeon.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Academic freedom, Adnan Oktar, Biology, Bogus history, Books, Censorship, Charles Darwin, Creationism, Darwin, Justice, Law, Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to Schadenfreude alert: Turkish creationist gets three-year sentence

  1. Ed Darrell's avatar Ed Darrell says:
    May 14, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Wow. That’s quite a bit different from the tame version on Reuters. Do you think it’s reliable?

    Maybe another post on the topic later today.

    Like

  2. Vasha's avatar Vasha says:
    May 14, 2008 at 11:16 am

    An an article in a Spanish newspaper has more details: http://www.elperiodico.com/default.asp?idpublicacio_PK=46&idioma=CAS&idnoticia_PK=508376&idseccio_PK=1021&h=

    Like

  3. Unknown's avatar Turkey opens up to WordPress blogs? « Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub says:
    May 12, 2008 at 5:35 am

    […] Was this a predictor of Oktar’s sentencing on May 9? […]

    Like

Please play nice in the Bathtub -- splash no soap in anyone's eyes. While your e-mail will not show with comments, note that it is our policy not to allow false e-mail addresses. Comments with non-working e-mail addresses may be deleted.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.