A Twitter user in Turkey has been sentenced to serve 15 months in prison for using Allah CC as his nickname on the well-known micro-blogging site. He was charged with humiliating religious values accepted by a part of the population.

Ertan P, who works as a teacher at one of the reputed schools in Turkey, was accused by prosecutors in the eastern province of “mus” or writing harmful content in the name of God or Prophet Mohammad. CC is the abbreviation for the Arabic phrase “celle celaluhu” which means Allah’s glory is almighty. To defend himself, Ertan said that his account had been hacked but prosecutors rejected his claims.

“The suspect has accepted the use of the nickname and the posts, but in order to avoid the crime, he said posts could have been written after the account was hacked. It is understood that this claim is unfounded and the investigation files prove him guilty as charged,” the indictment said.

In the past, Turkey has sentenced celebrated pianist Fazil Say to serve 10 months in prison after he retweeted several lines attributed to the renowned poet Omar Khayyam. They also sentenced Armenian linguist and writer Sevan Nisanyan to serve 58 weeks in prison for allegedly insulting Prophet Mohammad in one of his blog posts. Both cases drew a lot of public attention but media reports were carefully covered up before they could gain international momentum.

Photo Credit: Adam Kliczek / Wikipedia