Daily Alert Archives

Did the Iranian Government Encourage a Fleeting Era of Reform in Order to Identify Its Opponents So As to Come After Them?

[New York Times] Camelia Entekhabifard - In 1992, when I started working in Tehran, I was very careful about what I would report. That is, until right after the election of Mohammad Khatami, the reformist president, in 1997. Then I, like so many other journalists, quickly went to work for the country's leading reformist papers. The last newspaper I worked for in Iran - Zan - was closed by the judiciary in the spring of 1999. I was in the U.S. at that time, and as soon as I returned to Tehran, I was arrested. The government held me in solitary confinement for three months, and during that time I confessed to crimes I never committed and did whatever a human being could do to save his or her life. I now wonder if all the opportunities we had seen for reform were really illusions created to trick us.
2007-08-24 01:00:00
Full Article