IRAN: Ten days of anguish, abuse inside Tehran's prison archipelago: Via Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.

All 33-year-old Ali-Reza wanted to do was stop pro-government Basiji militiamen from beating up a man lying on the ground. Instead the engineer said he wound up in the clutches of the capital's security archipelago, where he was himself beaten for days.

The east Tehran resident's story is among the tales of abuse and detention surfacing from Iran's weeks-long crackdown against dissidents and protestors in the wake of the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a vote marred by allegations of massive vote-rigging. 

Ali-Reza said he was near Tehran's Fatemi Square on June 13, a day of riots and unrest just after the election, when he spotted the plainclothes Basiji fighters beating a man "in a very bad way," he said.

"Do not beat him!" he protested to the Basijis.

But instead of laying off, the militiamen came after him. "They started to follow me," he said. "I ran and changed my direction, but in a dead-end street they caught me."

He said they began pummeling him. "The started to beat and beat and beat me, with their batons, feet and cables."
They stuffed him into a van with other young men and women and took them to a holding cell near Horr Square, where they were all beaten for more than two hours, he said.

"You voted for Mousavi," one of the Basijis told them, according to Ali-Reza. "Beating you is our right. We can even kill you." 

The Basiji called each other by honorifics, like Haji or Seyed, never by their real names.

Read Original Article:(Via Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.)