With Iran once again in the news, I wanted to return to a post from almost 17 years ago about Ahmad Batebi. It starts with a question—and after repeating the post again as it first was in 2008, I’m going to ask it again…and answer.
Now, back to AUG 2008 at the OB Blog:
A couple of weeks ago, the NYT gave us an answer to the "I wonder what ever happened to that guy .." question. Do you remember the cover shot from The Economist on the right?
After three days on the run, Ahmad Batebi picked his way down a rocky slope to the stream that marked Iran’s border with Iraq. His Kurdish guides, who had led Mr. Batebi, an Iranian dissident, through minefields and dodged nighttime gunfire from border guards, passed him to a new team of shadowy human smugglers.
At the age of 31, after nearly eight years in Iranian prisons, subjected to torture and twice taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose, Mr. Batebi had fled.
But in Iraq, his former captors had one more chilling message for him. Not long after his arrival in Erbil in March, the new cellphone provided by United Nations officials rang. Mr. Batebi was shocked to hear the familiar voice of the chief interrogator at one of Iran’s notorious prisons.
“We know where you are,” the interrogator said. “You must turn yourself in.”
Instead, Mr. Batebi, one of Iran’s best-known dissidents, received permission to enter the United States. He arrived on June 24.
In several lengthy interviews, Mr. Batebi provided an unusual window on Iran under its ruling clerics. His alienation began at age 9, when he witnessed a deadly stoning. He rose to fame in 1999, appearing on the cover of The Economist magazine holding the bloody T-shirt of a fellow student demonstrator — an image he first saw when a judge slapped it before him and declared, “You have signed your own death sentence.” Finally, after a decade of political combat, he reluctantly decided to abandon Iran for an uncertain exile.
You should read the whole thing.
He is still with us, fighting the good fight. He has his own webpage. Go pay him a visit.
I sincerely hope after the IRGC is purged from their soil Iran can go back to being a free modern and civilized nation.
An inspiring message. The ideals can carry across to more, and resonate.