Before you try to line up this insanity with the old Inquisition garbage on destroying the sinner’s body to save the soul – that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t a theocratic justification for torture, which would almost be too clean and honest for these cretins. That’s the kind of spectacle that, for better or worse, you still have to own.
This even goes beyond old-fashioned brazen totalitarian denial, though there’s some of that ala the regime’s brazen “prison rapes, what prison rapes” party line. What’s added here is sneering anti-clerical populism, where a “salt-of-the-earth” Ahmadinejad thug mocks an ostensibly decadent cleric for breaking under weeks of torture. Charming:
A close aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist critic of the president, appeared so gaunt during his televised confession this month because he himself had decided to take off some weight. “It’s natural that when someone has become fat, in prison he understands that his fatness harmed his body and spirit,” said Ali Akbar Javanfekr.”So maybe Mr. Abtahi took advantage of this opportunity to lose weight.”
Observers were stunned when Abtahi, who served as a vice president for former reformist President Mohammad Khatami, publicly confessed to conspiring against Ahmadinejad. It wasn’t just that his words appeared to be copied verbatim from Iran’s hardline press. But the 51-year-old looked terrible… The mid-ranking cleric appeared gaunt, withdrawn and without his turban.
Here’s the pre and post, via the LAT and courtesy Iranian news agencies. The reports say that he spent weeks under interrogation and in solitary confinement, which in Evin means you’re locked up in a tomb-like box, taken out occasionally for beatings, and – even if you’re male – regularly raped.
Remember when Iran got a slot on the UN Human Rights Council’s Durban steering committee, the better to plan a conference that demonized Israel for human rights abuses? There are literally billions of people, to say nothing of a decent swath of the US foreign policy commitunity, who think that the appointment was perfectly reasonable. But at least when our foreign policy experts explain their reasoning it has an air of nuance.
On the plus side, maybe this is something Obama can ask the mullahs about if they ever deign to let him personally try to appease them.
References:
* Mohammad Ali Abtahi [Babyon And Beyond]
* Figures: Iranian Prison Guards Rape Female Prisoners Before Execution “Lest They Go To Paradise” [MR]
* Clenched Against The Male Prisoners They’re Raping [Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched?]
* Iran Elected To UN Human Rights Council, Appointed To Plan Anti-Racism Conference. Hey, Why Not? [MR]
Previously:
* Clinton: Iran Protests Are An “Internal Matter”
* Media Slightly Exaggerating Ahmadinejad’s Acceptance Of Israel, Willingness To Give Up Nukes
* United Nations: Iran’s Murder Of Peaceful Protesters Raises “Troubling Questions”
