Iran Document: Maziar Bahari's Response to His 13-Year (and 74-Lash) Sentence

On Monday a Revolutionary Court in Iran sentenced Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, in absentia, to 13 years and 74 lashes. Bahari, detained just after the June election until October, offers this response:

I didn't attend my sentencing. In June last year, I was thrown into prison in Iran for 118 days, then finally released and allowed to leave the country in October. But on May 9, 2010, without bothering to inform me or my lawyers, Branch 26 of the Revolutionary Court sentenced me to 13 years and six months imprisonment plus 74 lashes. A member of my family went to the court just this morning and was told of the judgment, such as it was: a reminder that this is a regime that deals in brutal symbols that make sense only to its own.

The Real Threat to Iran: The Spies of the Daily Show
Iran Video & Text: Maziar Bahari on His 118 Days in Detention
The Latest from Iran (11 May): Opposition Surfaces

You may say, "Thirteen and a half years is already a harsh sentence, why do they need to flog you as well?" My guess is that they hate the idea you might come out of jail unscathed, and relish the notion they could leave marks on your body that you could never forget—if you were there to feel them. Or perhaps in a perverse way the sentence is meant to win my gratitude. On the day they let me out of prison last year, the resident judge in Tehran's notorious Evin prison told me that there were 11 charges against me. So in a sense, as I was reminded repeatedly during almost four months of interrogation and torture, I was benefiting from "the Islamic kindness" of the "holy" government of the Islamic Republic when I got out.


The six charges I was sentenced for and the reason for the sentences, as my interrogator and the resident judge told me, are as follows, and they will tell you more about the regime than about me. I was, after all, just doing what a reporter does. But like the interrogators in George Orwell's 1984, those at work in Iran's justice system today are not interested in having you tell the truth, they are intent on making you accept their truth:

Five years imprisonment for unlawful assembly and conspiring against the security of the state.  I reported about four days of peaceful demonstrations after the presidential election in June 2009 when millions of Iranians came to the streets to oppose the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Four years for collecting and keeping secret and classified documents. In 2002 a leader of the opposition group Freedom Movement of Iran gave me a court document about the arrest of members of his group. There was nothing secret in the document. Everything in it was later announced by Iranian judiciary officials. The Revolutionary Guards who raided my mother's house to arrest me found the document in one of the boxes they confiscated. I was never interrogated about it and it was only mentioned once during 118 days of interrogation.

One year for propagandizing against the system. In a series of articles for NEWSWEEK after the presidential vote I quoted members of the opposition who said Ahmadinejad's reelection was tantamount to a military coup: that it tightened the grip of the Revolutionary Guards over Iran's military, political and economic affairs. The Guards also took over the intelligence apparatus. After they arrested me, they said that by reflecting the views of the opposition groups I was staging a media campaign against the Islamic Republic.

Two years for insulting the Supreme Leader.  In a private e-mail to my NEWSWEEK editors Nisid Hajari and Christopher Dickey, I said that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has learned from the mistakes the Shah made when he was overthrown by the Islamic revolution in 1978 and 1979, and Khamenei ould not allow his opponents to act so freely. I mentioned that Khamenei tries to nip the opposition in the bud by arresting its leaders and preventing people from coming to the streets. The agents of Khamenei who tortured me for months said that by comparing the ayatollah to the shah I was implying that Khamenei was a dictator, and that calling him a dictator was an insult.

One year and 74 lashes for disrupting public order.  On June 25 I reported at a demonstration in Tehran that led to a clash between the paramilitary Basij forces and a group of young people who attacked a Basij base. I filmed the attacked and wrote about it for NEWSWEEK. I was told that reporting the incident incited the public to rise against the government.

And, finally, the real icing on the cake:

Six months for insulting the president. Someone tagged a photo of a young man kissing Ahmadinejad so that it appeared on my Facebook wall. My interrogator said that the picture implied that Ahmadinejad was a homosexual and that it was an insult.

Strangely, no sentence was handed down for any of the more severe charges brought up when I was being interrogated and tortured. Those included spying for the United States, Great Britain, and Israel; paving the way for a "velvet revolution" in Iran like the peaceful revolutions that transformed Ukraine, Georgia, and Czechoslovakia; being in contact with Jews and Israelis; improper sexual conduct; and putting various reformist leaders in touch with Western governments.

None of those charges made any more or less sense than the ones I was sentenced for, so why leave them out?

I can write these lines with my tongue firmly in my cheek from the safety of my house in London, of course, but more than 30 journalists, writers, and bloggers are still languishing in Iran's prisons. Dozens of others are either out on bail or furlough and can be put in prison anytime the Revolutionary Guards desire. Hundreds of other Iranians are in jail for charges that are even more absurd than mine. Five activists were executed on May 8, and 25 others are on death row.

Since the disputed election last June, the regime has somehow managed to contain the public outcry against its injustices by passing preposterous sentences and saturating Iranian cities with the police and Revolutionary Guards. A wave of judgments like the one against me, coming on the eve of the first anniversary of the election, appears aimed at discouraging people from taking part in new mass demonstrations aimed condemning the reelection of Ahmadinejad and the repression that followed.

Whether the regime successfully preempts the demonstrations this time we will have to wait and see, but it cannot play this game forever. Its fantasy of justice, like its fantasy of democracy, and its fantasy of economic development is a farce. Iranians are too smart, and too hungry, for that. One way or another the future will belong to those who want to build their future in the real world.

UPDATED Iraq Analysis: 100+ Die as The Politics and The Guerrilla War Continue (Cole)

UPDATE 1215 GMT: Juan Cole has posted another note with the latest death toll (119) and reading of the bombings.

A bit of context for Juan Cole's latest evaluation of the Iraq situation: Steven Lee Myers writes in The New York Times that Monday's attacks killed at least 101 people and wounded hundreds more. In The Guardian of London, former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, whose Iraqqiya list won the most Parliamentary seats in the 7 March election, warns, "This conflict will not remain within the borders of Iraq. It will spill over and it has the potential to reach the world at large, not just neighbouring countries. Now Iraq is at centre stage in the region. But it is boiling with problems, it is stagnant and it can go either way."

A series of coordinated attacks on checkpoints and a Shiite mosque on Monday in Iraq demonstrated that the guerrilla opposition to the US-imposed new order in that country continues to be active and organized. Some 300-400 civilians and members of security forces are still being killed in political violence every month, not counting the insurgents themselves.

Iraq: The Politicians, The Clerics, and a Coalition? (Alaaldin)

The death rate from such violence appears little changed this year from last. The attacks continue to make economic progress difficult; they often disrupt the work (and even destroy the edifices) of government agencies, and they discourage foreign investment. Attacks on Shiite mosques are intended to provoke reprisals against Sunni Arabs, sharpening the contradictions and polarization and making Sunnis easier to recruit and mobilize for the resistance.


Meanwhile, one of the only ways mainstream Sunni Arabs, about 17 percent of the population, can hope to avoid another purely Shiite-Kurdish government would be to acquiesce in the formation of a government of national unity. That step would require the secular Iraqiya List, for which most Sunni Arabs voted, but which includes secular Shiites like its leader Iyad Allawi, to join the government. Thus, Al-Sharq al-Awsat reports in Arabic that incumbent PM Nuri al-Maliki and Iraqiya leader Iyad al-Allawi have met to discuss a place at the table for the Iraqiya.

This move would have benefits for several parties. Al-Maliki campaigned against ex-Baathist secularists, but his current allies, the Shiite religious parties of Ammar al-Hakim and Muqtada al-Sadr, seem insistent on replacing him with someone else, perhaps Ibrahim Jaafari. The Iraqiya might prefer al-Maliki, who has backed off purely sectarian language and speaks like an Iraqi nationalist, even though he remains head of the fundamentalist Islamic Mission Party (Da’wa), to a more sectarian candidate favored by the Sadrists. So, if al-Maliki can draw the Iraqiya in, it might be a way of outmaneuvering Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army al-Maliki attacked militarily in 2008. Ammar al-Hakim of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is close to Tehran, has in any case made it clear that he will not join a government from which Allawi’s list is excluded.

So the scenario I predicted soon after the March 7 election, of a core Shiite alliance but a government of national unity that includes Iraqiya and the Kurds, seems in train. It replicates the government of summer, 2006, when US ambassador Ryan Crocker worked hard at cementing it. This time, much of the work seems to be being done by the Iraqis themselves, sometimes reluctantly, as the need for political reconciliation bears in on them and they realize it is key to their future as a state.

Afghanistan Analysis: Is the "Kandahar Offensive" Crumbling? (Porter)

Gareth Porter writes for Inter Press Service:

Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.

Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, as Afghan President Hamid Karzai begins a four-day round of consultations with President Barack Obama and other senior U.S. officials here this week, the new report has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in The Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.

Afghanistan Analysis: Does General McChrystal Have Any Idea of What is Happening? (Mull)

The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.


The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.

The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".

That is an obvious reference to the dilemma faced by the U.S. military in Kandahar: the entire government structure is controlled by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the much-despised brother of President Hamid Karzai. The U.S.-supported provincial governor now being counted on to introduce governance reforms, on the other hand, is generally regarded by Kandaharis as powerless, as Jonathan Partlow reported in The Washington Post Apr. 29.

These negative comments on the campaign in Helmand and Kandahar by senior Washington officials pointing to problems with McChrystal's plan suggest that even more serious concerns are being expressed behind the scenes.

The Pentagon report on the war betrays similar doubts about the strategy being carried out by McChrystal, both by what it highlights and what it fails to say. Damning with faint praise, the report says the offensive waged in the Marja region and elsewhere in Helmand achieved only "some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds".

Paralleling the quote from the "senior military official", the report says progress in "governance and development" in has been "slow". Demonstrating that the Afghan government could provide "governance and development" had been announced as the central aim of the offensive in Marja.

The section of the Pentagon report on the state of the insurgency goes even further toward declaring that the McChrystal plan had failed to achieve a central objective, concluding that the Taliban strategy for countering the offensive "has proven effective in slowing the spread of governance and development".

The key finding is that the Taliban have "reinfiltrated the cleared areas" of Helmand and "dissuaded locals from meeting with the Afghan government" by executing some who had initially collaborated.

The overall negative tone of the analysis of what happened in Helmand appears to reflect a decision by Pentagon officials to withhold its vote of confidence in the McChrystal war plan.

Read rest of article....

Turkey Inside Line: Opposition Leader Resigns, Turkish-Russian Relations & More

Ali Yenidunya launches his new feature picking up and analysing the key news from Turkey:

The Opposition Leader Resigns: The leader of the main opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP), Deniz Baykal, resigned from his post on Monday. The purported reason is a video clip allegedly showing him having sex with a party deputy, Nesrin Baytok. According to the claim, her husband Can Baytok helped this forbidden relationship so his wife could become a member of Parliament. Baykal, during his press briefing, called thevideo a two-week-old "conspiracy" and added:

I will never let anyone question me due to this immoral and unlawful conspiracy. If it has a cost and if it is to resign from this chair, I am ready to pay it. My resignation does not mean a surrender to this cowardly conspiracy against me, you and CHP. Indeed, it is a challenge!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfVaALhtTro[/youtube]



Then Baykal accused the government of waging a smear campaign:

It is impossible to prepare and release such a two-week-old, tough conspiracy work encroaching rights and morality of the main opposition party's leader without government's information and approval. The "good will" and statements of "sorrow" showed following the incident will never cover up the guiltiness of the work backstage.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded:

Statements of Deniz Baykal are ugly and unequal. They are political defamation-oriented. Charging the offense on the government is immorality.

The counter-reply came from the spokesman of CHP, Mustafa Ozyurek:

Mr. Prime Minister gave such an ugly response. We are facing a prime minister who cannot comprehend an honourable man's honourable move. Mr. Baykal, in his talk, said "The lawbreaker stand up" and the lawbreaker stood up!

Mr. Prime Minister says that they tried to prevent the dispersion of the video. This is false. The clip was tried to be prevented with efforts of the prosecution office; not of the prime minister! Even now, these ugly scenes are on internet.

The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has launched an investigation to determine who filmed the video and put it online. The Prosecutor's Office is working with the Ministry of Justice in order to determine the name or the IP number of the uploader on the website Metacafe. Assistance from Canada has been officially requested since the website is owned by Tucows İnc. in Toronto.

Within the CHP, some believe the video was uploaded to the Internet ito weaken the current party leader and administration ahead of the party congress on 22 May. Some CHP officials point at Şişli Mayor Mustafa Sarıgül, who established Turkey's Change Movement (TDH) after he was expelled from the CHP, reportedly over a disciplinary issue. CHP Secretary General Onder Sav claimed that Sarıgül bribed a gang leader to shoot Baykal in his legs during a visit to Brussels on 13 April. His claim is based on an e-mail sent to the İstanbul Police Department by an unidentified individual.

Moscow-Ankara Ties: Dmitry Medvedev, the President of Turkey's main gas supplier Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, is coming to Ankara from Damascus on Tuesday. "Some 25 agreements will be signed," the Kremlin's top foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said.

Agreements include an arrangement between Russian gas giant Gazprom and state oil firm Rosneft and a cooperation memorandum to build and service a nuclear power station. Most prominently, Moscow is trying to convince Ankara to build a section of its key South Stream pipeline through Turkey's portion of the Black Sea to create a new route bypassing Ukraine for Russian gas to Europe. Turkey, which supports the rival EU-backed Nabucco pipeline, has agreed to allow Moscow to start surveys in its territorial waters in the Black Sea for South Stream.

Erdogan's "3 Children" Proposal: The Premier, for a long time, has called on the citizens of the Republic to have at least three children. He restated at a wedding ceremony on Sunday:

Turkey's current population increase rate is 1.5 for some and 1.8 for others. This means that the population of this nation is getting older. And we are proud of our young population now. Therefore, this [growth] must be over 2.5. If it goes like this, our situation is not good in 2038. I am saying this as the Prime Minister. Maybe, we will put an award for this because we must succeed.

The Suspicious Link between the Murder of Hrant Dink and Ergenekon Suspects: According to Istanbul Police Department, six of 52 Ergenekon suspects, accusing of a conspiracy against the Government, had telephone conversations with the suspects of the Hrant Dink case. Dink, assassinated in 2007, was a well-known member of the Armenian minority in Turkey and editor of the Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos.

The accused included Brigadier General Veli Küçük, lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, Levent Temiz, Mustafa Levent Göktaş, Erbay Çolakoğlu, and retired captain Muzaffer Tekin.

Iran Special: A Renewal of Protest for 12 June?

Just over 24 hours ago, we wrote, "Iranians and activists throughout the world responded with sadness and fury to the Sunday morning news that five Iranians...had been executed....But what will the response be inside Iran? Will the hangings provoke public anger or will any display be muted?"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqqsSVWVa1s&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

UPDATED Iran Video: Protest Against Ahmadinejad at Shahid Beheshti University (10 May)
The Latest from Iran (11 May): Opposition Surfaces

We got a partial but vivid answer yesterday. The Tehran Bus Workers Union, as well as labour activists outside Iran, condemned the hangings. Mir Hossein Mousavi issued a statement on "the Judiciary shift[ing] its position from supporting the oppressed toward supporting authorities and those in power....Is this the...justice you were after?"


And then there was the demonstration at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. As news leaked that President Ahmadinejad was coming to the campus to speak, the students gathered. They not only gathered; they chanted defiantly. They proclaimed their readiness to sacrifice; they sang songs of unity; they taunted the President. They did so in the face of the security presence and even as the clashes began.

That protest alone resurrected international coverage of Iran as more than a nuclear issue. The 8-minute clip of the chanting and the confrontation with Iran's security troops gave images to reports which had come out in the press, bringing broadcasters like CNN, which had gone to sleep over the post-election developments, to life.

Defenders of the regime will jump in today and claim this was an isolated incident, even as they redouble the loud pronouncements of foreign intrigue and a malevolent opposition. But consider that yesterday's university protest, even if fueled by the news of Sunday's hangings, was not the first one this month. Students at Tehran University also defied the regime crackdown on 1 May, again "welcoming" the President as he tried to seize publicity with a statement from the campus.

That in turn winds the clock back to November-December 2009 when opposition was marked by a series of university demonstrations before, during, or after National Students Day on 7 December. Publicly this kept demands for justice and rights simmering, leading up to the show of resistance against the Government on Ashura (27 December).

And it should never be forgotten that the public display is not and will not be the sum total of discontent with and challenge to the regime. The simple formula of Greens v. Ahmadinejad ignores the strands of pressure upon the President, coming not only from "reformists" but from other politicians, clerics, and even the "conservative" establishment. While the Green Movement has supposedly crumbled after 11 February, more blows have been thrown against Ahmadinejad over his economic plans, the supposed corruption and mismanagement of allies including his First Vice President and his Chief of Staff, and the handling of the post-election crisis.

The image of a revival of direct opposition to the President, even if it is "only" on a university campus, buttresses the political foundations for that assault upon Mahmoud. Thus the significance of the coincidence that the Shahid Beheshti demonstration occurred as former President Hashemi Rafsanjani was resurfacing with the pointed declaration that his 17 July Friday Prayers, which was accompanied by large demonstrations, still contained the solution for this crisis.

Will it do the same this time, as the clock now ticks toward the 1st anniversary of the Presidential election on 12 June? Too soon to tell. However, I have to raise a bit of a smile that yesterday's events came only hours after an analyst for Al Jazeera English, Massoud Parsi, declared:

Several months on, Ahmadinejad's government appears to have emerged stronger and more self-confident than it was before the contentious elections....

The government and security forces have managed to suppress any serious challenge to the government and what looked like an increasingly popular movement has withered away as a result of a brutal crackdown and political gamesmanship.

This has been greatly assisted by foreign plots against the regime, which made it much easier for the government to rally support in the face of external threats.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. The Fat Lady (and Mahmoud) have not sung. This is not over.