Iranian Protester Sentenced to Death Escapes to America
Here is a glimpse of the Iran that Ahmadin-a-jihad won’t be speaking about to the American press anytime soon. Especially as he postures to the American voting public during his visit the U.N. this week. The article below is the story of a young activist originally sentenced to death for being photographed protesting publicly against the Islamic government in 1999. Why? The photo became published on the cover of The Economist and seen world wide. It nearly cost him his life had it not been for the publicity it received, and the public outcries on the depravity of the sentence… read on…
NINE years ago, Ahmad Batebi appeared on the cover of The Economist. He was a 21-year-old student, one of thousands who protested against Iran’s government that summer. He was photographed holding aloft a T-shirt bespattered with the blood of a fellow protester. Soon afterwards, he was arrested and shown our issue of July 17th 1999. “With this”, he was told, “you have signed your death warrant.”
During his interrogation he was blindfolded and beaten with cables until he passed out. His captors rubbed salt into his wounds to wake him up, so they could torture him more. They held his head in a drain full of sewage until he inhaled it. He recalls yearning for a swift death to end the pain. He was played recordings of what he was told was his mother being tortured. His captors wanted him to betray his fellow students, to implicate them in various crimes and to say on television that the blood on that T-shirt was only red paint. He says he refused.
He was sentenced to death for “creating street unrest”. But after a global outcry, the sentence was commuted to 15 years in jail. He speculates that his high profile made it hard to kill him without attracting negative publicity. For two years, he was kept in solitary confinement, in a cell that was little more than a toilet hole with a wooden board on top. He was tortured constantly. Only when he was allowed to mingle with other prisoners again did he begin to overcome his despair.
He suffered a partial stroke that left the right side of his body without feeling. He needed medical attention. The regime did not want to be blamed for him dying behind bars, he says, so he was allowed out for treatment. Three months ago, on the day of the Persian new year, he escaped into Iraq. On June 24th he arrived in America.
He spoke to The Economist on July 7th. Looking at the picture that sparked his ordeal, he says that another man in his place might be angry, but he is not. Mr Batebi is a photographer himself. He says he understands what journalism involves. Had we not published the picture, he says, another paper might have. Looking at the same picture, his lawyer, interpreter and friend Lily Mazahery says she is close to tears: in it, the young Mr Batebi’s pale arms are as yet unscarred by torture.
The protests Mr Batebi took part in nine years ago frightened Iran’s rulers. The students were angry about censorship, the persecution of intellectuals and the thugs who beat up any student overheard disparaging the regime. Mr Batebi thinks Iran could well turn solidly democratic some day. In neighbouring states, religious extremism is popular. In Iran, he says, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not.
He is cagey about how exactly he escaped. But he says he used a cellphone camera to record virtually every step of his journey, and will soon go public with the pictures and his commentary. Meanwhile, he seems to be enjoying America. He praises the way “people have the opportunity to become who they want to be”. Shortly after he arrived, he posted a picture of himself in front of the Capitol on his Farsi-language blog, with the caption: “Your hands will never touch me again.” — The Economist Editors (his blog photos in the U.S. speak for themselves !! — ZZ staff)
This is an example of the kind of oppressive society that the religions leaders and radical Islamic jihadists have planned for all the non believer infidels of the satanic western world in their declared Jihad. Regardless of your political persuasion, please sit up and take note of the kind of government that Barack Obama wants to have a dialogue with. Do you think that the Messiah-Obama will be able to convert these people with his silver tongue alone??
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on Tuesday - Jul 29th, 2008 at 2:06 am James Silveus wrote:
And those like Ahmad Batebi still living in Tehran would also be the collateral damage, the limbless statistic, of bombs dropped on it. How dare you take the moral high ground.
What about your very own John McCain’s tasteless, senseless joke regarding cigarettes as a “way to kill them”. Who is this “them” he speaks of? Maybe in Iran, paradoxically only soldiers, police officers, and government officials buy infidel commodities, and are thus the only victims of the long-term hazards of smoking. Or could it be, rather, the cumulative identity of Iran that McCain so casually disparages? Get off your high horse, your party does more to ferment hatred and fear of the Persian constituency than it wishes them well.
Need I remind you that it was the deposition of Mohammad Mosaddeq in 1953, a move supported and funded by the British and American governments, via Operation Ajax, for the benefit of AIOC (now known as BP), that created the context for the Islamic Revolution in the first place?! We have long since proven to Iran what our government’s interests in it are, and any overt action geared toward political change there would be viewed with the utmost scrutiny and end just as disastrously.
As a “liberal secular humanist” that you people seem to hate so much, I despise Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Islamic Republic he stands for, and its methodologies. Part of being liberal is having a distaste for such horrendous politics. I fully support the leftist student demonstrations taking place against that oppressive regime. However, taking our soldiers and our weapons and obliterating the infrastructure of Iran will do nothing less than turn it into the next Iraq, and for what?
In the words of Batedi himself, the government is religiously extreme, but the people are not. Yet it is those very same people who would suffer the most from your party’s willingness to ba ba ba ba bomb, bomb bomb Iran.
You are so quick to devalue diplomacy, editing out the years of no progress and cowboy rhetoric with respect to the Bush administration and North Korea, and the recent inverse; this is true of Iran as well. My suggestion to you would be to read the works of Thomas P.M. Barnett, or see one of his recent talks. The Islamic Republic is objectively something of a soft target, and can be dealt with similarly. The goal here isn’t to “appease” the Islamic Republic, it is to slowly but surely pave the way for that state to allow people like Batedi to change it for the better from the inside, and you don’t do that by threatening to outright destroy the state. That rhetoric just makes a state fearful, oppressive, and militarised. Just like they are. Just like the USSR was under Stalin. Just like America was in the heyday of McCarthyism.
Consider this another Cold War, and deal with them as if it were one. That is what is best for the Iranian people, in the greater good sort of way. Getting all kneejerk reactionary to a torture story and deciding it’s okay to immediately bomb their infrastructure and replace their regime at great cost to the people you postured over… not so much.
on Tuesday - Jul 29th, 2008 at 6:43 pm ZZ Bachman wrote:
Excuse me but where does it say anything about bombing Iran or the Iranian people??? In fact when did John McCain ever say he wants to bomb Iran? I would like to see the specific quote please.
The issue here is with the radical islamists that “govern” Iran and are depriving the Iranian people their freedom of expression and rights as human beings to disagree with their leadership. (Just as many in the U.S. disagree with G.W. Bush openly every day). It’s the radical Islamists that are hell bent on destroying Americans who are the target of the editorial above not the average Iranian citizen. (Unless of course those Iranian citizens are in fact radical terrorists hell bent on the death of innocent Americans.) In fact the article makes it very clear, as well as the editorial comments, that the majority of the Iranian people want the same liberties as any other peoples on this planet.
I would rather have a strong government run under someone who thought like Ronald Regan - my opinion - (you do recall the mess Jimmy Carter made of things when Americans were held for months in Tehran by Islamic Fundamentalists in the 70s). Those hostages were released because Tehran, (and the Ayatollahs) knew with CERTAINTY that unless they did so, their country might become a wasteland and their deserts turned into glass. They knew Ronald Regan was not going to “play” like Jimmy Carter did.
Obama seems like another Jimmy Carter to me. (Again my opinon). I would take a strong leader that projects a certain amount of fear and uncertainty than someone who seems like he can be manipulated while devious intentions unfold behind the scenes. I would suspect if I lived in Tel Aviv, I would be especially concerned with any U.S. President that could appear to be “weak” by the radical Islamo-facist deviates.