Comments on: Facebook Poser Gets Three Year Sentence

By: Jailed Moroccan Facebook Poser Released and Pardoned · ordaso.com

Jailed Moroccan Facebook Poser Released and Pardoned · ordaso.com — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:23:05 +0000

[…] year old Fouad Mourtada of Morocco, who was serving a three year prison sentence for impersonating the Moroccan king’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on Facebook, has […]

By: Jailed Moroccan Facebook Poser Released and Pardoned

Jailed Moroccan Facebook Poser Released and Pardoned — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:42:46 +0000

[…] year old Fouad Mourtada of Morocco, who was serving a three year prison sentence for impersonating the Moroccan king’s younger brother, Prince Moulay Rachid, on Facebook, has […]

By: mariejo

mariejo — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 19:52:09 +0000

Le monde entier est scandalisé, le Maroc est ridiculisé !
Bon courage, Fouad !!

By: Larbi Maaninou

Larbi Maaninou — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:52:56 +0000

A young Morrocan is in prison for 3 years. It A creates a profile on facebook in the name of a Moroccan prince. Nothing low register. But the Moroccan State does not like the innocence of creation.
Write in Fouad Mortada and ask its release.
lididi@justice.gov.ma (gouvernement)

copy:
petitionmaroc@hrw.org
amdh1@mtds.com
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=morocc

By: reda_ea

reda_ea — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 08:08:52 +0000

“In countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got”
Since when being stupid became a crime ? + there are no laws against it, he was convicted on crimes such as “document falcification” and such (and the accusation was decided *AFTER* he got arrested)

“@29 you gotta remember this is Morocco, $1000 fine is probably a significant amount”
for a beginning enginer (no job experience) $1000 is about 60 to 75% of one month’s salary, so no it’s not by any means a significant amount.

and by the way yes i AM from morocco (and i am a computer science engineer too)

By: Ambrosius Amadeus

Ambrosius Amadeus — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:37:12 +0000

You have to wonder what would happen in the US if someone was on MySpace pretending to be the Presidebt of the US. Con artists should not have a safe haven to fraud people. Pretend to be someone you are not and you go to jail. Sounds good to me.

Ambrosius Amadeus (the original)

By: I Like Mike

I Like Mike — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:19:18 +0000

Mikey, you are the reason I love the internet. It’s a place full of crazy people with entertaining, if not all too often completely bonkers opinions.

“In countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got”

Whilst I appreciate our Moroccan friend didn’t set out to sabotage the irksome Royal for purely altruistic reasons, making the above statement is a bit like suggesting “those darned females shouldn’t be asking for the vote in 19th Century America”.

By: Shibopi

Shibopi — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 11:05:01 +0000

im starting a new profile for that prince and im gonna photoshop his face onto a image of a man banging a sheep, see how that goes down

By: nabil

nabil — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 09:43:29 +0000

Mike, Mike, your country, the USA is the country of Human rights, freedom, blablabla….. If I tell you Guantanamo, a war in a country supposed to have massive weapons but where we found nothing (this war just killed thousands of sons, fathers, moms…) and also the death penality that sometime kills innocent people, etc… does it tell you something? As a moroccan and although I am against the USA government acts, I visited this country a few months ago. Why? because I think that I should not compare american people and american government . Michael Arrington, if you decide to go to Morocco, whatever you think about Morocco monarchy, I think you would appreciate the moroccan hospitality but next time please, before writing something like “I am scratching Morocco of my holiday list”, think a little bit more about people there that are living by the tourism revenue.

By: ringlerun

ringlerun — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:38:50 +0000

3 years does sound very harsh… but if its human rights you are worried about, what the hell are you doing living in the US!

btw, get your blog software up to date and allow readers/commentors to follow updates to comments via email…

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:55:17 +0000

@29 you gotta remember this is Morocco, $1000 fine is probably a significant amount

By: airj1012

airj1012 — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:36:21 +0000

$1,000 fine to a 3 year sentence doesn’t seem too proportional at all. How about a $10,000 fine and a year sentence?

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:36:29 +0000

I don’t understand the outrage here. There is no human rights violations. His country has a law prohibiting the impersonation of royalty, and he violated that law. We have similar laws in the U.S. regarding the impersonation of police officers, government officials, etc. This person committed a form of identity theft and fraud.

I agree 3 years seems harsh for a victimless crime, but don’t we in the US have similarly long sentances for other victimless crimes?

By: Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 02:15:08 +0000

It’s his dumb fault for being an idiot. You have to be retarded to think that the Morocco monarchy would take it as a joke, I mean seriously…

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:30:21 +0000

If human rights are a metric for that list of vacation destinations, Morocco probably should not have been on it in the first place. It’s an autocracy…

By: Will Sommer

Will Sommer — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 01:19:28 +0000

What happened to Mourtada is terrible, but it shouldn’t be any surprise to people who’ve followed Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara.

By: Dallas J Clark

Dallas J Clark — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:56:37 +0000

gheez I’m glad I live in Australia, I can say right here that I think Kevin Rudd (our Prime Minister) is a d!#khead and know I am safe to get away with it.

By the way, I’m his father!

By: MikeT

MikeT — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:40:36 +0000

@antje: totally agree.
This guy would not have any trouble if he stole the identity of a million average Joes from Morocco. However, he stole the name of a royal, who has huge power in that country.

He played with fire and he got burned.
He knew very well that it’s dangerous, but he did it anyway. I doubt he would know what Facebook is if he were mentally challenged.

By: Elia

Elia — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:29:09 +0000

antje wilsch : Good point.

By: antje wilsch

antje wilsch — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:22:27 +0000

if lying in one’s profile online were a crime, all of the dating sites would be shut down…The eharmony ceo is probably jealous he can’t put liars in jail.

By: Alex Linhares

Alex Linhares — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:16:44 +0000

Take a look at how depressing this is: http://www.economist.com/blogs...../fnord.cfm

By: MikeT

MikeT — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:14:49 +0000

@Alex: considering the punishment for a fake account on Facebook, I think this news deserved to be here: it’s drastic and it’s related to tech

If someone got waterboarded in the US for a fake Facebook/MySpace/Orkut?etc. account - I think it would have been here really quickly.

BTW: this news came out a couple of days ago (I sent it to TC via “submit” function because there is no other way to contact you guys) why posted so late?

By: Alex Linhares

Alex Linhares — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:09:12 +0000

C’mon Mike, I think you should be well aware that it sounds pretty weird for an American to be looking down at “the human rights situation” in other countries during this nasty moment in history. Guantanamo, waterboarding, vigillance without warrants, Abu Ghraib.. the list is long and nasty. The Moroccan government is obviously a POS easy target country; but you, on the forefront of tech; could talk about your own house before taking the high stand against a straw man such as that screwed country.

By: mikeT

mikeT — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 00:03:05 +0000

The petition won’t help.

The guy is a moron ’cause at his age he understood well what he was playing with.
As I commented on the previous post about this - in countries like Morocco what he did is horribly stupid and he deserves what he got.

By: Elia

Elia — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:53:35 +0000

Peter: Don’t worry, facebook and morrocan government don’t understand jokes, so they will sell us to them, and make it sound like they are doing it for a good thing.