Haleh Esfandiari- "True Confessions" from Iran

If your mother was jailed by the Mullah's of Iran, you would be upset too. in My Mother's Interrogators Haleh Bakhash complains about the regime of the Mullahs. Don't wait until it is your mother, or you, in an Iranian jail. Bakhash writes:

 

It was obvious from the words she used that much of what my mother said was scripted. Some of the phrases that she and two other prisoners -- Tajbakhsh and a man arrested last year who has since been released -- are shown saying echo statements that Iran's Intelligence Ministry has issued to describe their cases. Her statements, to me, sounded wooden -- unnatural and coerced. But did she say anything incriminating? Certainly not.

 

What Iran's security authorities, in their infinite wisdom, are presenting to the world and to their domestic audience is a doctored "interview" in which dishonest cutting and splicing unconvincingly attempt to make the most ordinary statement appear to be part of a great "conspiracy," a harbinger of massive subversion.

 

What did you expect? Didn't we sit through the same movies in the 1930s with the Soviet trials of "left deviationists" and "right deviationists" and their "confessions"? In reality, everyone know what such regimes, with their forced confessions and staged trials are like. But most of the time we ignore it, because it is expedient not to think about it, not to contemplate the fate of victims of such regimes, and not to think about what we are not doing to stop them. Mexico thinks Iran is just fine, and concluded some nice economic deals with them. So does Mr. Chavez. Are you making money from Iran? Isn't everyone? Isn't it time to do something about it??

 

Ami Isseroff

 

Cross posted: Israel News  Middle East Analysis