Ed Brayton is a freelance writer and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Hurun Yahya, aka Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar, has been found guilty in a court in his home country and sentenced to prison:
Controversial Turkish Islamic author Adnan Oktar was sentenced to three years in prison on Friday for creating an illegal organization for personal gain, state-run Anatolian news agency said...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.
I have no idea if the charges are legit, of course.
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Most reports of this affair are brief and give absolutely no details of exactly what criminal activities the "foundation" supposedly engaged in. However, a Spanish newspaper reports that female members of the organization used sexual favors to bring in new members and donations, and these encounters were filmed and blackmail was used to control said female members.
Note that many headlines have said that Oktar was condemned "for heading an anti-evolution organization" or similar wording, as if the creationism was the crime!
Posted by: Vasha | May 11, 2008 4:02 PM
Harun Yahya/Adnan Oktar has been a laughingstock in anticreationist circles for years. I know, from experience(because I got one of these), that he tried, among other things, to get an anthropologists' e-mail list on his creationist list. Everybody there laughed at him, and that was three or four years ago. I wonder why it took the Turkish courts so long to catch up with this?
Anne G
Posted by: Anne Gilbert | May 11, 2008 5:33 PM
Hello there, I did some investigation about this harun yahya guy, his real name is Adnan Oktar, harun is his pen name.
After a significant investigation, and research that I found out he has no education to write any books, or have any opinions at all. This is unbelievable. Most religious scholars read the Koran in Arabic, this guy don't know anything in Arabic. He did not even graduate from college or any University. He is a scam artist, he is very smart, he gathers beautiful people including ex male models to trick pretty girls in their cult, and share girls body in the name od Allah.
This is an incredible sin.
So basically he uses religion, and darwinizm, and anti-Masonist and Jew attitude as platform to hide his ignorance.
Someone translated one of his videos, and it is simply ridiculous. He has a vocabulary of a 10 year old kid.
Posted by: Nick Duster | May 12, 2008 8:54 AM