None of this justifies persecuting academics for conducting science and/or having not great opinions of their government. None of this is an excuse to throw away rule of law, and none of it justifies treating humans without basic dignities https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.independent.co.uk/ne...
If you really want to understand the mentality of people that would lead them to submit to an organization like that, I suggest reading "Black Book" by Orhan Pamuk.
(As an aside, we met 2-3 years back in Portland a few times at some of those New Relic meet ups, I hope neocities is still doing well!)
There's a great site on Neocities that's been doing this with Scientology since our foundation and is regularly updated https://scientology.neocities.org
(Neocities is going strong, thank you!)
Jokes aside, most of these generals were already getting arrested or getting kicked out of the military in the following weeks, they just decided to actually do the crime they are getting arrested for