Posted on 05/06/2011 12:16:55 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
While Britons celebrated the royal wedding last Friday, one of Iran’s greatest intellectuals willingly fell to his death from the sixth-floor balcony of his Tehran apartment. Siamak Pourzand, aged 80, had held out long enough against the Islamic Republic.....
Pourzand was an already prominent cultural commentator and foreign correspondent long before Ayatollah Khomeini boarded a plane from Paris, full of big ideas, in 1979....
Secular and cosmopolitan to the core, Pourzand had no time for the guardianship of the sadists and made a point of saying so, especially in the late 1990s when he began writing for various opposition newspapers (having been banned from the ones that were now mullah-controlled).....
....On November 24, 2001, days after he’d been followed by armed men on motorcycles, Pourzand was abducted rather than arrested by Amaken agents outside his sister’s home in Tehran.
....A fellow detainee at one prison in north Tehran said the septuagenarian Pourzand was made to “stand with arms raised facing the wall for hours and hours....
The Amaken made sure that Pourzand’s case fell under the jurisdiction of the notorious Branch 1610 of Iran’s judiciary. Its presiding judge, Ja’far Sabiri Zafarqandi, was a stooge for the morality police. He used state media to allege that Pourzand had acted against national security, kept ties with foreign enemies, collaborated with the Shah’s old intelligence apparatus that had been extinct since 1979, consumed alcohol and carried out an illicit affair with a secretary of the Arts and Culture Center. (The secretary had herself had been detained, beaten and tortured weeks before Pourzand’s abduction; she warned his family something bad was on its way.)
Having confessed to these fictitious charges, Pourzand was sentenced to 11 years in jail and 74 lashes.............
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.telegraph.co.uk ...
Unfortunately, UNLIKE OBL, who apparently was chased for the past 10 yrs at least, none of the prominent Mullahs, nor any public figures, belonging to the Islamic Republic Regime, have had the same treatment in the last 32 yrs. The fact that they are all still very alive & kicking is not very reassuring. One wonders why..
After reading the whole article in the UK Telegraph, I dare say stories like this man’s have instilled fear in the people, though his daughter’s comment at the end of the article is good.
I know of one of the daughters mentioned in the article. (no other comment on that). Suffice it to say that people like the man mentioned in the article are & have been plenty in the last 32 in Iran. Not to mention women & children. Indeed, fear has been instilled in people in Iran. BUT, the Regime, over the last 3 decades, has spread itself in Iran, and has gained good control, thru various means, not only in Iran, but outside too (even in the West). There is no doubt whatsoever, that the Regime will only be petrified of the People in Iran once it knows that the Iranian are in a position to oust them. At present, that scenario is wishful thinking & VERY Unlikely — the Regime knows that too.
Obama certainly isn’t championing freedom for the people of Iran.
Thank you for your insight.
From Pourzand to Poundzand in one meteoric descent.
Secular and cosmopolitan to the core, Pourzand had no time for the guardianship of the sadists and made a point of saying so, especially in the late 1990s when he began writing for various opposition newspapers
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.