Police launched a large-scale operation to combat “obscene and criminal websites,” arresting 241 people in in Sistan and Baluchistan province in mid-March.
The head of Sistan and Baluchistan’s cyber police, Mohammad Hosseinipour, told journalists that 200 men and 41 women had been arrested on charges of setting up and operating up to 900 illegal websites. Hosseinipour told the press conference that all websites operating from the province were being monitored on a “24-hour basis.”
“The police managed to reduce the average time between a crime being committed and the perpetrators being identified from 41 to 18 days,” reported the Shahrvand website, quoting Hosseinipour. “So far 877 criminal websites have been identified and their operators have been arrested.”
“Because of the high popularity of internet cafés, the owners have been asked to equip their places with cameras and register the identification of all their clients,” the police chief added.
Hosseinipour acknowledged that conventional crime was now migrating online, and that the police were in need of specialzed training to cope with the change. Family photographs have gone online, as had fraud and theft. But, he said, the police unit was making progress. “The total number of solved crimes has increased two and half times” in recent months.
According to the Shahrvand report, since 2008, authorities throughout the country have discussed the necessity of establishing a general prosecutor’s office to specialize in criminal activity online.
Read the original article in Persian
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