'What Will Happen To Those Arrested In Iran? I Can Tell You': Via Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

By official count, some 450 people have been arrested in opposition protests against Iran’s presidential election results. Many sources inside Iran put the count in the thousands. To those arrested 10 years ago, in Iran’s last great wave of student demonstrations, what the new detainees face next is already clear. Ali Fathi (a pseudonym) was one of those students arrested in 1999. This is his story.

What will happen to the people who have been arrested in the protest rallies in Iran? I can tell you.

[...]

But the punishment I received was so out of proportion to my actions – and so truly criminal – that I had to flee my homeland and seek political asylum in Europe.

In 1999, Mohammad Khatami was president and reformist hopes were high that the Islamic republic’s oppressive ideological atmosphere was lifting slightly.

[...]

Then came the sparks that ignited the demonstrations that swept campuses across Tehran and spread to other cities in the summer of 1999.

After two weeks, I was transferred to a succession of other prison cells, with no idea where I was. Sometimes, the cells were pitch dark. Sometimes, they had four brilliant light bulbs shining 24 hours a day.

I was lucky I had nothing to confess. And I was lucky that made me of no real interest to my captors. After eight months, as inexplicably as the way they had treated me, they let me go.

[...]

My parents had all but given me up for dead. For months they had gone around every prison in Tehran trying to locate me. At every place, they were told there was no record of me being detained. But one official said it was likely I had been made to “disappear.”

The police sent my prison file to an old man in my home town who had lost three sons in the Iran-Iraq war. He owned a men’s shoe store next to the local bank that no one shopped in because the fashions were 10 years old. But he was powerful because he was strongly linked to the Revolutionary Guards.

This man was my parole officer. I had to appear before him each week to show I was still in town. If I wanted to visit friends in another city, I needed his permission.

His only demand of me was to pray. Not just in the mosque but in private prayer meetings as well. And eventually, I complied.

That was how I began my journey out of Iran. As he gained trust in me, I could more easily get permission for longer absences. And on one of these absences, I slipped out of the country.

[...]

Was it worth this to escape my home country and to leave my parents and dearest friends? Of course not.

But for me it was a question I never had to ask. The government of my country took my country away from me. And my crime was nothing more than taking part in a political demonstration.

Read Original Article:(Via Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty .)