You can compare them to your torture chambers, AmeriKans!
"Freed US hiker has meeting with Iran’s president; Recounts details from her year in Tehran prison" by Samantha Gross, Associated Press | September 25, 2010
NEW YORK — Sarah Shourd, one of three Americans arrested last year while hiking near the Iran-Iraq border, met with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran yesterday to plead for the release of her imprisoned fiance and their friend....
Related: Spies Playing Reporter
Iran Recognizes AmeriKan Reporters
A Quick Hike Through Iran
Iran Releases CIA Spy
Shourd, 32, who called the encounter “a very gracious gesture and a good meeting,’’ said that Ahmadinejad seemed friendly, and that it was “a very human encounter, very personal.’’
She must have been tortured, huh?
Family spokeswoman Samantha Topping confirmed the meeting with Ahmadinejad, who was in New York to attend the United Nations General Assembly. Topping declined to say what was discussed....
Shourd told the Associated Press on Thursday of the monotony, cramped quarters, and fears for her future that she experienced during her 410 days in an Iranian prison, mostly in solitary confinement.
Was she waterboarded?
See: The End of American Justice
Oh, that isn't torture now? We must still be using it!
In one of her first interviews since her Sept. 14 release from Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, Shourd said that she chooses to savor the few moments of joy she found in her imprisonment.
And she is still alive!
Related: No Medals For AmeriKans in Afghanistan
Died in our custody, huh?
One of her happiest days, she said, was the celebration of her 32d birthday last month. Somehow, her two friends had persuaded a guard into bringing her a cake, and even found a way to give her a whiff of liberty.
Well, our innocent Muslim guests are not accorded such things.
Also see: Bagram prison worse than Guantanamo
Hard to imagine how it could be worse, but there it is.
They talked her through a whole imaginary day that they called a “freedom walk’’ — from waking up and having pancakes, to going to a lake, then walking to her mother’s apartment. When they came to the part of their story where the apartment door opened, Bauer and Fattal spun Shourd around.
“They had brought all the pictures we had of our family and put them on these boxes, so everyone was there, and it was a surprise party. It was beautiful,’’ she said, her voice catching. “I cried.’’
I think it is safe to say their are no birthday cakes in AmeriKan black site torture chambers.
But most days in prison were far more monotonous — or terrifying.
Here comes the torture, right?
In prison, she kept reviewing her last day of freedom. What could they have done differently?
Refused the mission.
What if, when they asked a tea vendor near a waterfall for advice on a hiking path, they had gone another way?
If you read the links I provided you will find they were warned about going that way and went anyway. One of their party got scared and went back to the hotel!
Of course, why would I expect full disclosure and the truth from my newspaper these days?
She recalled how the three made a vow while blindfolded in a prison van shortly after their capture: If they were separated, they would go on hunger strike until they were reunited.
Related: Ramadan Force-Feeding, and Renewed Secrecy Surrounding Hunger Strikers in Guantรกnamo
Who is more humane, AmeriKans?
She followed through when the three were split up, starving herself for four days, lying alone in her cell and growing weaker.
On the fourth day, the hikers were brought together for five minutes. Shourd began eating again, but their captivity was just beginning.
Not much of a strike.
Alone in her cell, Shourd began going over multiplication tables in her head. It was the only way she could keep out thoughts of her mother. Of whether she knew where her daughter was. Of how worried she must be. Of whether they would see each other again.
And THOSE who we have PUT into a HOLE?
Related: Typical Terror Trial Coverage
Yeah, I guess TORTURING CHILDREN is okay when AmeriKa does it.
If she thought of her mother, she began to fall apart, Shourd recalled.
I'm sorry, folks; I'm just having a hard time getting up the sympathy and empathy for a spy.
“I just had to be sure that I was strong when I went into the interrogation room, because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t, that they didn’t manipulate me into saying anything that I didn’t want to say,’’ she said.
Then there was NO TORTURE at ALL, huh?
A few times a day, a female guard would come bearing a blindfold, so that when Shourd arrived at the interrogation room she could not see the faces of her questioners.
She was amazed at their “good cop, bad cop’’ approach, just like on TV shows back in the United States....
Sigh.
Eventually, the interrogations ended....
Not here in AmeriKa.
The trio had local TV, including 15 minutes of English-language news, every day.
WOW!
The IRANIANS TREAT THEIR PRISONERS WAY BETTER than we treat ours, AmeriKan!
They received a bundle of letters from their parents and siblings about once a month.
No mail call in U.S. torture dungeons.
And they had books in English. Shourd read the Koran, using her basic Arabic to communicate haltingly with some Farsi-speaking guards about religion.
Are you sure they were held at a prison?
--more--"
Related: Iran Doing What America Will Not
When does the shame take hold, 'murkn?
"Oman seeking release of 2 US hikers" by Associated Press | September 29, 2010
TEHRAN — A delegation from Oman is visiting Iran to try to secure the release of two Americans imprisoned for more than a year, accused of illegally crossing the border and spying, the US State Department said yesterday.
Oman helped secure the Sept. 14 release of a third American, Sarah Shourd, who was arrested with Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal near the Iran-Iraq border in July 2009. Shourd says the three were just hiking through a scenic area of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region during a vacation.
Her release raised hopes that Oman — an ally of both the United States and Iran — could help secure the men’s freedom. An Iranian newspaper reported that Omani officials were expected to visit Iran as early as Sunday and hoped to leave with the detainees....
I do believe they left empty-handed.
Shourd’s release, which the Iranians said was because of her illness, was a bittersweet milestone. Shourd, 32, left behind her fiance, Bauer, and their friend Fattal, both 28, to possibly face trial on espionage charges.
Last week, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, met with Shourd while he was in New York to attend the UN General Assembly....
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More eyewitness testimony:
WASHINGTON — Richard Morefield — an unflappable career diplomat who was consul general in Tehran when he was seized by Iranian militants in 1979 and endured 444 days in captivity, including three mock executions — died Oct. 11 in Raleigh, N.C., of pneumonia. He was 81.
Yeah, AmeriKan torturers did that, too.
Mr. Morefield was a seasoned Foreign Service officer who arrived in Tehran four months before a mob of Iranians stormed the US Embassy on Nov. 4, 1979. An economics specialist with a self-possessed demeanor, Mr. Morefield was sent to Iran because of his experience working calmly amid violence-racked countries such as Colombia.
He found an explosive situation in Tehran, which was then churning with anti-American sentiment after the United States gave safe passage to the nation’s ailing former emperor, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who had fled the country months earlier. The revolutionary fervor led to the seizure of the embassy and the holding of 52 American hostages. An international crisis ensued, prompting 14 months of intensive diplomatic negotiations to secure their release.
The United States staged a military rescue mission in April 1980 that proved a disaster. Two of the helicopters collided, and eight US service members died. Their charred bodies, left behind, were displayed on Iranian television and deepened the sense of foreboding about the embassy hostages.
Just after being sequestered, Mr. Morefield was taken to a basement holding space and blindfolded, forced to stay silent except when interrogated. He was told to kneel, and a pistol was placed against his head. The gun clicked. The chamber was empty.
CIA agents have done that.
This happened twice more during his captivity. He was otherwise held in isolation in a cramped cell lit only by window slits high above him. It was a frightening experience, defined mostly by the uncertainty of what would happen next.
I'm finding the double-standards most distasteful.
Following lessons he learned in training for the diplomatic corps, he made no attempt to befriend guards and ate all food offered to him. He later said that he kept healthy physically and mentally by doing light exercise — push-ups, sit-ups, pacing his cell — and by recalling math problems from his childhood and creating crossword puzzles in his head.
He said his captors tried to play with his head by allowing him cards and books, only to take them away without warning.
Yeah, that's real torture!
He spent his 25th wedding anniversary in a cell, thousands of miles from his wife, Dorothea, who became a formidable presence in the news media during the hostage crisis....
Many might consider that a relief!
Not much different than marriage when you think about it.
The Iranian captors released the hostages on Jan. 21, 1981, soon after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration as president.
Yeah, NOTHING about the OCTOBER SURPRISE MEETING between the campaign and Iran reps in Europe or the weapons flows that began soon after Reagan took office.
Mr. Morefield said he left Iran with only what he was wearing and one possession: his gold wedding ring.
Richard Henry Morefield was born in Venice, Calif. After his parents divorced, he grew up in San Diego with his mother and grandmother.
He graduated from of the University of San Francisco in 1951 and, after service in the US Army in Japan, received a master’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Mr. Morefield joined the State Department in 1956. After his release in 1981, he flirted briefly with a run for the US House before continuing a career in the diplomatic corps.
He accepted another dangerous post, becoming consul general in Guadalajara, Mexico.
In later years, Mr. Morefield developed sleep apnea and refused to wear a mask to treat the disorder.
It reminded him of the bag the Iranians forced him to wear around his head when he was a hostage.
I imagine our detainees will feel the same way -- if they survive and are ever released.
And I bet they will never go swimming again.
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Related: US adds sanctions over rights abuses in Iran
PFFFFFFFT!
And WHO gets MESSAGES out of an AmeriKan prison, folks?
"Messages escape from Iran’s prisons; Officials urge judiciary to stop flow of criticism" by Thomas Erdbrink, Washington Post | October 5, 2010
TEHRAN — For Iranian political prisoners, being locked away is not necessarily a barrier to speaking out.
It is in AmeriKa.
Activists, politicians, and journalists — most of them arrested in the aftermath of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed June 2009 election victory — have been telling of torture, criticizing Iranian leaders, and encouraging others to continue their protests in a series of taboo-breaking letters written from prison.
Why did the Iranians allow such things? We don't!
Government officials and their supporters in the media say the criticisms threaten national security and are demanding that judiciary officials put a stop to them.
Abdollah Momeni, a former student leader, described in vivid detail in a recent letter how he was brutally beaten dozens of times by his interrogators, kept for weeks in a tomblike cell, and forced to confess to crimes he says he did not commit.
Oh, like our TORTURED TERROR PATSIES here in AmeriKa!!!?
“All this treatment is carried out in the framework of a religious regime, justified by claims of protecting the state,’’ Momeni, 34, wrote in the letter published three weeks ago on the website of a human rights group that is critical of the Iranian government. “Haven’t the law enforcement officials and the rulers of the current government of the Islamic Republic failed the test of justice, morality, and humanity?’’
Sound FAMILIAR, AmeriKans?
Momeni also used the letter to call for the establishment of a truth commission to investigate the conduct of prison interrogations.
No, we do NOT GET THOSE CALLS here in AmeriKa!
And even if we do, BOTH POLITICAL PARTIES SHUT IT DOWN!
So much for TRANSPARENCY and CHANGE, 'eh, AmeriKa?
Momeni is one of what foreign-based human rights groups say are about 500 prisoners of conscience, the majority of whom were arrested after the elections. Last week, the Obama administration stepped up its pressure on Ahmadinejad, with a new set of sanctions intended to punish top Iranian officials deemed responsible for the arbitrary detention, killing, torture, and beating of Iranian citizens since the 2009 presidential election.
He's amazing, isn't he? What a PoS president.
During mass trials, many Iranian citizens admitted to having been part of a Western-inspired plot to organize riots and bring down the Islamic Republic. But many later said that their confessions had been made under duress....
But if they are "terrorist" confessions produced by AmeriKan torture it's fine!
It is unclear how his and dozens of other messages traveled beyond the walls of Tehran’s Evin prison, where most of the country’s political prisoners are held.
And how they got into an AmeriKan newspaper!
But family members and friends have said the letters are authentic, and foreign-based opposition websites and television channels have published many of them, much to the anger of some Iranian officials.
“Our prisons have become a center for issuing statements and declarations,’’ Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency last week. “Where in the world do prisoners issue statements?’’ he asked.
Nowhere.
The news agency, headed by a close Ahmadinejad ally, even accused the judiciary of secretly supporting some of the political prisoners.
There have been several recent high-profile conflicts between the government and the judiciary, including disagreement over the release last month of Sarah Shourd, an American held with two others since July 2009, and the sentencing of a woman convicted of adultery.
Related: Globe Flogs Iran
Remarks made during closed-door court sessions have also been leaked....
And from prison, journalist Isa Saharkhiz sued Nokia Siemens Networks for providing Iranian security officials with key surveillance systems that led to his arrest.
You see, freedom doesn't mean shit when there is a chance to make a buck!
Opposition sources say some prison wards containing political prisoners are overseen by intelligence officers, members of the Revolutionary Guard, and other security forces. During a first period of questioning, the prisoners are often kept in isolation and are permitted only later to share cells and make phone calls, opposition sources say. Most prisoners are allowed to meet with family members.
Not in AmeriKa's black site torture chambers!
Families DO NOT EVEN KNOW they are THERE!
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Add a couple more spies to the Iranian hotel, 'er, prison registry:
"Iran’s top ayatollah targets university; State set to wrest control of school from moderates" by Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press | October 12, 2010
TEHRAN —In a separate development yesterday, Iran said it had arrested two foreigners as they were interviewing the son of a woman whose death sentence by stoning on an adultery conviction ignited international outrage.
Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, a judiciary spokesman, said the two foreigners had entered the country on tourist visas and did not have documents to prove they were journalists.
His comments were carried on the official IRNA news agency.
In Berlin, the German Journalists’ Association said two German journalists were arrested Sunday while interviewing Sajjad Qaderzadeh, the son of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtian, 43.
The union did not name the journalists but urged Iran to immediately release them.
Where is the outrage at and urgings to AmeriKa (or Israel)?
The whereabouts of Qaderzadeh and his mother’s lawyer, Houtan Kian, were not immediately known and their cellphones have been switched off since the foreigners’ arrest, possible indications that they, too, are in custody.
The arrests are likely to draw even more international condemnation of Iran, already under fire from the West over its nuclear program.
Also, the United State has repeatedly condemned Iran for holding two American men in prison for 14 months. Iran initially accused the two of crossing the border from Iraq illegally but later leveled more serious allegations of spying.
An American woman arrested with the two was released last month on humanitarian grounds. She and the US government insist the three were innocent hikers and if they crossed the border, it was inadvertent.
--more--"
Also see: Iranian women study workings of local government
But no torture chamber tour, right?
Update:
"Mother of hiker says Iran set trial date
The mother of one of two American hikers still jailed in Iran said yesterday that she’s been told they will stand trial in November and that it will finally give them the chance to deny formally the espionage charges against them.
Who cares? They can rot there forever for all I care. I have enough to worry about regarding my own stinking government and its actions.
