Last week, our families published information that has been gnawing away at us for many months: my brother Josh and his friend Shane Bauer have been beaten while in Evin Prison in Iran and feared that they would be executed shortly after their arrest nearly 23 months ago. Shane and Josh have endured long stretches of solitary confinement, no access to their lawyer, and almost no contact with their families during their 682 days in jail. As if all that were not punishment enough for crimes they never committed, they world now knows that Shane and Josh have suffered physical abuse and psychological torture as well.
Sarah Shourd, Shane's fiancée and Josh's close friend, shared the details of this abuse with our families some time after she was released from 410 days of solitary confinement on payment of $500,000 bail last September. For a long time, I had buried this troubling knowledge away in a place where I would not have to think about it. But sharing it with the world has forced me to try to imagine what it must be like for Shane and Josh in their darkness and isolation. It feels like a kick in the chest. To imagine Josh being forced down a flight of stairs, to imagine him shaking in fear for his life, and to imagine Shane being slammed repeatedly against the wall of their cell makes me angry and sick.
If there's anything at all redeemable about what has happened to Josh and Shane, it is the awareness of their unbreakable commitment to each other. Josh was pushed down a flight of stairs by a guard who got angry with him for taking extra food on the way back to his cell one day. Shane and Sarah were separated from Josh and thrown back into their cells, where they began pounding on their doors and screaming. The same guard who had got angry with Josh came into the cell Shane shares with him and began slamming him against the wall, time and time again. When Sarah first told me about Shane screaming out, "Where's Josh! Tell me, where's Josh!" as the guard continued his assault, it confirmed what I already felt, that Shane is like a brother. To know that he would take a savage beating to the point of having the back of his head bleed to stand up for Josh is touching beyond words. I'm not surprised Shane is made of such mettle. As we work for Josh and Shane's release, my family has come to know the stock Shane comes from and the values he grew with. His family has been inspiring.
Shane, Josh and Sarah have defended each other since the moment they were taken by Iranian guards on the unmarked border with Kurdistan, a relatively peaceful and semi-autonomous region of Iraq where they were hiking behind a mountain waterfall during a vacation together. A few days into their captivity, they feared they would be killed when a soldier escorting them on a nighttime ride to an unknown location began cocking his weapon. Now Shane and Josh have only each other, God and their courageous lawyer, Mr. Masoud Shafii (who is still being denied his right to see them).
Iran remains deaf to the calls of people such as Muhammad Ali, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ela Gandhi, Mairead Maguire, Jose Ramos-Horta, Yusuf Islam (the former Cat Stevens) and many, many others around the world. Why the people in Iran responsible for denying Josh and Shane their freedom are intent on embarrassing their own country is unclear. It can only be because they view my brother and Shane as backgammon chips in some political game they have nothing to do with. They need to be taken off the board: enough is enough!
Last week, I marked Josh's second birthday in prison with his friends and colleagues in rural Oregon. It was a somber occasion to say the least. Shane, and everybody who loves him, will be marking his second birthday in prison on July 13. Let us hope that Iran will have come to its senses long before then and that Shane will be celebrating his freedom with Josh, Sarah, our families and all the other people who love them.
Alex Fattal: Two Years Too Long
Frankly it is a bit rich to be hear an American complaining about 2 US nationals held without access to a lawyer and in solitary confinement and for him not to even mention the 400 Muslims held into Guantanamo or utter the words Abu Gharib or talk about the Black Sites.
"Josh was pushed down a flight of stairs by a guard who got angry with him for taking extra food on the way back to his cell one day"
After reading this article I would actually prefer to be imprisoned in Iran than in Abu Gharib or Guantanamo if I had a choice.
No you wouldn't. Try reading up on the treatment of Iranian protesters after the 2009 elections. Some useful keywords for you on that internet search: Gang rape, torture, execution.
And who says this is "Muslims vs. the USA"? Who are YOU to turn this into some proxy battle between your idealized, monolithic entity you call "Muslims" and Americans (apparently all of us are the same and support what went on at Abu Ghraib, according to you).
None of the "Muslims" being held at Guantanamo are Iranians. What argument were you trying to make again?
http://en.rsf.org/iran-iranian-authorities-responsible-15-06-2011,40455.html
Reporters Without Borders today deplored the death in prison of journalist and writer Hoda Saber and accused the Iranian regime of being responsible
He was taken to hospital with chest pains on 10 June and died of a heart attack a few hours later. The Evin prison authorities did not inform his family, who learned about his death two days later on the Internet.
“We send our deepest condolences to his family and to all Iranian journalists,” said Reporters Without Border secretary-general Jean-François Julliard. “The authorities who arbitrarily arrested him failed to give him proper medical treatment. We support the family’s complaint and demand that the prison deaths of all journalists and political prisoners in Iran be investigated.”
Saber, 52, worked for Iran-e-Farda, and had been in prison since being arrested on 12 August last year. He began a hunger-strike on 2 June this year to protest against the death of his colleague Haleh Sahabi. Prison officials were slow in sending him to hospital on 10 June, contravening article 103 of prison regulations.
Saber was a well-known opposition figure familiar to security and legal officials at Evin prison. It was the fourth time he had been jailed in 10 years. In 2003, he and Reza Alijani, winner of the 2001 Reporters Without Borders - Fondation de France Prize, and Taghi Rahmani were given five-year prison sentences at a secret trial for allegedly “undermining national security and putting out false news to disturb public opinion.” The sentence was reduced a year later to six months.
Yesterday (13 June), 64 political prisoners in Saber’s Evin prison dormitory put out a statement saying that two hours after being taken to the prison clinic before dawn on 10 June, Hoder had been returned to his cell and shouted that he had been beaten instead receiving medical treatment and that he would file a complaint. A few hours later he was sent to Modares hospital where he died.
The statement said that before Saber began his hunger-strike, he had no heart problems.
We're supposedly enlightened beings. You are fully capable of feeling compassion for all victims of torture, whether they are our fellow countrymen or at the hands of our fellow countrymen.
I find the hypocrisy on these boards to be surprising over and over again - I guess I want to believe better of people than I see on here.
No one is even alleging torture
But hey, feel free to disagree. I mean, there are people who still argue water boarding isn't torture...
While there is no excuse for the abuse of prisoners, the one thought that keeps coming to mind when I read about this situation is "What in the #$^& were these people doing 'vacationing' in a war-torn country and then hiking along the border of a nation that is known for this behavior and which has a whole lot of reasons to be angry at the US."
As I stated, I make no excuses for Iran, but you have to be responsible for your own safety and not do incredibly stupid things like 'vacationing' where this kind of stuff happens.
I am an Iranian writing this comment from Tehran, actually a human rights activist with some good working links with some Govt organisations in Tehran. I should firstly say its a shame that these three people were/are treated in this way, I raised their case many times with different people who are somehow in charge, the problem seems to be they dont know how to get out of this mess, with no fair trial and no exact justifiable charges. they are not spies and that we all know. So the problem is lack of a face saving solution for the system, on one hand they could not release them just like that, as they might talk about what has happened to them and their illegal detention case, and on the other hand there is not enough evidence or legal charges to keep them in prison. There are many people like them in jails, mostly innocent and we don't feel good about it at all. The only way to solve this is find a face saving with some pride and honor solution. I think it should be the UN, UNSG should be asked to mediate, and active mediation I mean, not sending letters! unfortunately it seems your govt is also not doing much.As an Iranian I am so sorry for this and I know it will remain in memories of Americans for many years that we threat foreigners in this unfortunate way.
Perhaps you'd further your cause (especially theirs) by pointing out all these problems together. Perhaps showing that you're willing to criticize all such behavior and that your interest is universal would go much further to reaching your goals.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/no_justice_in_kafkas_america_20110613/
then tell me how unfair the iranians, or the chinese, or the syrians, or the russians, etc, etc, are being.
the u.s. through the cia and mi6 once terror bombed iran and destabilized the country to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister mohammad mosaddegh and replaced him with the dictatorial shah pahlavi. this led to the uprising decades later that brought the islamic revolution to power. even today we support the meks, a known, listed terror group with, money, training, and weapons to destabilize iran and some americans still think the iranians are being paranoid about american hikers?
if these people are being mistreated it should stop, but the u.s. and its holier than thou citizens should read some history and hold their own government accountable first.
I'm faving both comments... well said.
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In solidarity