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Behind the Curtain!

Ghazal Omid - 8/24/2007

This week, on August 21, 2007 Mr. Lee H. Hamilton achieved the goal of diplomacy for which he worked so hard for nearly four months, the release of Ms. Haleh Esfandari from an Iranian prison. As an Iranian and human rights activist, I am both relieved and saddened. Trite as it may be, sometimes the end does not justify the means. On one hand, I am delighted to see an innocent woman, an Iranian American scholar from Woodrow Wilson Center, freed without further delay. I was asked to help her and would have gladly done so had I been needed. On the other hand, the price Mr. Hamilton bargained for this release seems very high to me. He went on the MSNBC Nightly News program, hosted by Brian Williams, stating that after he wrote a letter to Ayatollah Khamani, appealing on religious grounds, he received a reply within three and half months and that this was the first time the Ayatollah has responded to such an appeal.

This sentence was, to say the least, a green light for the Iranian regime and the self-anointed Ayatollah, who Iranians are trying so hard to remove from tyrannical control over their lives, to continue the state’s oppression of Iranians under the aura of patently false Islamic righteousness.
MSNBC http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=f4c5c5e5-de7c-4074-b749-0c76921129e0&f=00&fg=email

I may be young and naïve in political matters compared to Mr. Hamilton but I was an Iranian child. I know the mentality and culture. Like many other dissidents born and raised in Iran, we grew up watching politics instead of playing with toys; particularly during the revolution and the eight year war that we saw the Ayatollahs prolong in order to stay in power. We, as Iranians, fear that Mr. Hamilton may have given the Iranian regime more than he knows or intended. He practically did back flips to get them to blink and release on bail a scholar. That may allow him to sleep at night—but it does nothing to prevent the deaths of many more innocent Iranians.

In a conversation on August 21st morning with one of the directors of the Wilson Center, she broke the news of Ms. Esfandari’s release to me before I could offer to help, saying, “She was released on bail. What does that mean?” I replied that means temporary freedom under surveillance, with the $320,000 bail guaranteed by the deed to her mother’s house. I was trying to explain what the Iranian regime will do next but she cut me off swiftly saying, “I don’t need to hear this.” I was not surprised by her reaction. I understood she didn’t want to debate someone who knows firsthand what the government of Iran is capable of. I apologized; saying I was only trying to tell her the truth and sincerely meant to help an Iranian. Her reaction saddens me in that she did not want to accept that the government of Iran is using Ms. Esfandari as bait to further their agenda and gain diplomatic recognition but that is the truth.

The best, brightest and bravest people of Iran will pay for the eye blink that US politicians assume was a DIPLOMATIC victory, and it is one where even the ultimate outcome for its immediate victim has yet to be determined.

The destiny of many political prisoners in Iran is defined not by days but by hours. It is understandable that Mr. Hamilton would go to almost any length to save an American, but I fear that in the process we have accorded the Iranian regime undeserved legitimacy in conveying on it a false impression of moral equivalency and human empathy. While outsiders relax in the afterglow of “well, maybe we can deal with them, maybe they have a heart after all,” the mullahs will continue to harass, imprison and execute anyone who defies them. Is securing one person’s provisional freedom while ignoring the fate of thousands worth the trade off?

I speak for nineteen political prisoners, many of them on death row, who endure physical pain daily and are kept in rat infested holes in worse conditions than most Americans have ever seen or heard of. The regime does not allow the UN or Amnesty International to visit the prisons to see if they meet even the lowest international standards of incarceration. For example, I speak for one prisoner who could die any day from untreated tooth infections, the result of a jaw broken when he was arrested six years go. The government of Iran has refused to accept his mother’s only deed and instead is demanding two deeds to release him for six days to obtain badly needed orthodontic surgery
http://www.omedia.org/Show_Article.asp?DynamicContentID=2513&MenuID=722&ThreadID=1014010

Ironically, the situation with Ms. Esfandari reminds the Iranian American population not of how much, but of how little Iranian lives seem to matter to some politicians. Although we are grateful for the effort that has saved, for now, this particular scholar, we are wondering, what will happen to those who are not scholars but just common Iranians who stand up to the brutal Iranian regime? As much as America approves what has happened for Ms. Esfandari, the average American doesn’t know how wrong a path politicians sometimes choose.

Iranians are wondering; is anyone among US politicians even curious about the death of two of our country’s bravest young men on August 03, 2007? What price dealing with terror regimes was the US willing to pay in this case?
http://activistchat.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=8657

Majid Kavousifar and Hossein Kavousifar “executed” Hassan Moghadas, a notorious Iranian hanging judge, whom Ms. Molly Moore described in her July 17, 2007 article in the Washington Post as “Judge, Jury and Prosecutor” responsible for the brutal killing of hundreds of political enemies of the Islamic Republic. After killing the judge in an act of revolutionary insurgency, the Kavousifars fled Iran for UAE where they told their story to the US Consulate in Dubai. The US Consulate referred them to the US Embassy in Abu Dhabi. The US Embassy, instead of any consideration of political asylum for the dissidents, turned them over to Interpol which through transferred custody to the UAE Police promptly handed them back over to the Iranian regime, to certain death at the end of a crane. We are wondering; when there is censorship of everything in UAE, where the undercover police matrix is so strong nothing goes unchecked, where even books such as mine cannot be published for fear of making women aware of their rights, how could the UAE police not know what they were doing—condemning young Iranian freedom fighters to certain torment and death?
http://hrw.org/advocacy/internet/mena/uae.htm

The inserted link of graphic photographs shows these two young men being hanged from cranes; a tragic injustice that shouldn’t have happened if we really want to help Iranians who are now mourning these two patriot heroes. This was such a painful event that VOA journalists dedicated an entire hour on August 9, 2007 to these brave men; a round table directed at Iranians inside Iran and aired courtesy of US taxpayers. http://www.activistchat.com/community/heroes.html

The executions took place outside the judiciary headquarters before a large crowd including Iran's Chief of Police, Brig. Gen. Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqqaddam, and Tehran's Chief Prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi. Iranians are wondering; who really is responsible for the betrayal of these patriots’ revolutionary courage? Is it the USA Embassy? Is it Interpol? Is it the Dubai Chief of Police, Lt. Gen. Dahi, a 26 years police veteran who must have known the fate to which he was consigning these two young men? http://archive.gulfnews.com/indepth/fncelections/candidates/10084618.html

While in Dubai in 2006, I photographed Gen.Dali’s house because the size of his multi-million dollar mansion and compound, in one of the priciest areas of Dubai, does not match police income in a country where the average income is about 50 thousand Durham, (US$20,000). After photographing his house from afar, I was placed under surveillance for the entire time I was in Dubai and was moved from room to room in my hotel. I was required to do any interviews from my hotel under observation in the hotel manager’s office. My calls were monitored and interrupted by authorities’ eavesdropping. This was at the time the US President was trying to give UAE the right to manage US ports. www.livinginhell.com/ Dubai

Iranians are wondering; was this fatal hand-off of the Kavousifars due to carelessness, incompetence, avariciousness or simply because US Embassy personal didn’t want to rock the diplomacy boat? Was this another blink? How could Interpol and the sophisticated governments of the US and UAE make such a naïve mistake as to not investigate the identity and reputation of the victim, before delivering these men into the hands of a government infamous for killing Canadian Journalist Zahra Kazemi? A capital crime, of course, for which Chief Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi is wanted by the Canadian government.

Driving around Dubai, you see many major buildings that insiders confirm are owned by Rafsanjani and other Iranian officials. Was this betrayal a cop-out by the staff of the US Embassy who didn’t want to get caught between the “business-as-usual” of the two countries? Iranians are wondering, is an investigation into the death of Majid Kavousifar and Hossein Kavousifar in order? Will it be pursued? Is it not as important for US career diplomats and politicians to try to save freedom-loving Iranians as it is to save their own political prisoners? Will the lives of Iranian children, women and men be forfeited as we play the games of diplomacy with a rogue, gangster regime?

http://www.petitiononline.com/achat49/petition.html