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Iranian Student Describes Years of Torture in Prison |
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Ahmad Batebi, the Iranian student who gained fame when, back in 1999 during a student riot in Tehran, a photo of him toured the world, said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” how he was physically and psychologically tortured during the nine years he spent in prison.
According to The Iranian Times during an interview with Anderson Cooper last April 5, Batebi described how he was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and threatened with execution after his photo holding a blood stained t-shirt was published at the front cover of The Economist. He was accused of smearing the face of the Islamic Republic that is a representative of god on earth, he was told by an Iranian judge.
After serving nine of his 15 year sentence in prison, Batebi began suffering seizures and was temporarily released for medical treatment. It was then than Batebi escaped from Iran smuggled through the border to Iraq by a Kurdish group. He contacted an attorney and was able to come to the U.S. under humanitarian reasons.
In July 1999, student dissidents were manifesting against the government. Batebi, a film student at Tehran University, was one of them. When police fired to the crowd one of Batebi’s friends was hurt by a bullet snipping the man’s arm. Batebi took his buddy’s t-shirt and tourniquet the wound to stop the bleeding. He then took his friend to the hospital. Upon his return to the riot he held the bloody t-shirt to show police brutality, not knowing it, Batebi had, in a snap shot, sealed his death sentence. A photojournalist captured the moment, perpetuated it, and the world saw it.
Batebi was arrested and kept isolated in confinement for several months. He was then transferred blindfolded and sent to court. They sat him in a room and opened his blindfold. It was then that, for the first time, saw himself at the front page of the English news magazine. The Iranian student told Cooper he spent 17 months in solitary confinement at Ervin prison. They kept the light on 24 hours a day. They kicked him in the teeth and broke them. There was a filthy toilet in the room stack up with human feces. They put his head into the toilet, beat his feet and testicles with a cable, used deprivation sleep techniques that lasted up to 72 hours, and hung him from the ceiling several times. However, Batebi never “sang”, he never betrayed nor gave information about his fellow protesters.
“I hadn’t slept for 72 hours. I couldn’t think clearly,” he said. “I was drooling. I want to sleep but they would slap me to keep me awake. In the final hours when even the slapping wouldn’t keep me up, theycut my arms and hands and put salt in my wounds so the burning would keep me awake.”
Batebi told Cooper that several times during his imprisonment he thought he was going to be killed. They would make him stand over a stool beside two other people also on stools. They would rap ropes around each of their necks. They would kick the stools of the two people standing on his right and left. He would observe the two hanging men’s feet turn blue as they perished. Batebi would remain on his stool shaking. Batebi explained that was a part of the psychological torture, way more effective than the physical one.
Today Batebi resides in Washington D.C. and works for Voice of America. When asked by Cooper if he now felt free he answered: “No I don’t feel free. I have a responsibility to the people imprisoned in Iran whose human rights are being violated. I have to get the message out. And it’s a big responsibility that doesn’t leave one free. But to an extent I feel free. I live in a free country and I have left prison."
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#1 |
on April 23 2009 00:13:02
#2 |
on April 23 2009 15:41:50
#3 |
on April 24 2009 12:59:33
#4 |
on April 24 2009 19:39:54
#5 |
on April 27 2009 12:44:59
#6 |
on April 28 2009 14:38:45
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