Iran’s Johnny Depp Flees Into Exile
Ahmed Batebi protests against Khameini
WHEN the order came to return to prison, the Iranian dissident had no time to lose. Ahmad Batebi’s body had already been broken by torture after eight years of a 15-year prison sentence. He had been beaten with metal cables, suspended by his arms from the ceiling and taunted with mock execution and had had his head dunked in excrement until he was suffocating.
Batebi fled the country with the help of a Kurdish underground movement, which led him over mountains and minefields across the border into Iraq. Last month he was granted refuge in America and is still coming to terms with his strange new freedom.
“It is as if I’ve been hit by a huge wave and I won’t know where the earth begins and the sky ends until I’ve reached the shore,” he said.
Batebi, 31, became an icon after he was photographed as a handsome young student waving the blood-stained shirt of a fallen demonstrator during mass protests against Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, and clerical rule in 1999. With his long hair and bandana, he embodied the new spirit of defiance in Iran.
His hair is still long and in a ponytail, the cause of some tut-tutting among the more conservative Iranian exiles. The New York Times recently called him Iran’s Johnny Depp. But the power of his image has been his blessing and curse ever since the photograph appeared on the front page of The Economist nearly a decade ago under the headline “Iran’s second revolution?”.
Batebi did not know of the picture’s existence until he was dragged to court for “creating street unrest” and the judge slapped the magazine in front of him. “You would have received a long sentence but because of this you will be put to death,” the judge thundered. The sentence was commuted to 15 years after an international outcry. Batebi describes himself as a human rights activist, not a political activist.
As the West ponders how to curb Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and sponsorship of terrorism — whether through diplomacy, isolation or military action — he wants the thousands of dissidents who are still suffering in prison to be remembered.
Even as he fled, the Iranian secret police pursued him all the way to Erbil in Iraq, he said. His chief interrogator at the notorious Evin jail in Tehran managed to reach Batebi on the secret number of his mobile phone, provided by the United Nations. “We know where you are,” the interrogator warned. “You must turn yourself in.”
After arriving in Washington, Batebi, a photographer, took a picture of his outstretched hand in front of the White House and posted it on his Yahoo! blog with the taunt: “Your hands will never touch me again.”
According to Batebi, he witnessed the stoning to death of an adulterer by Iranian Revolutionary Guards when he was nine. The man was buried to the waist and his head was covered with a sack that turned blood-red as blocks of concrete were thrown at him.
“It was a defining moment for me,” Batebi said through an interpreter, Lily Mazahery, an Iranian lawyer and human rights activist in Washington who helped to bring him to America. “It made me despise man-made religious laws and people who want to use Islam to oppress others.”
The price of his defiance can be seen in the deep scars on his shoulders and arms — and other parts of his body hidden by clothing. In prison he was repeatedly blindfolded, beaten and deprived of sleep. Pulling up the sleeves of his T-shirt, he said: “I don’t know what they used to cut me, but they put salt in the wounds to stop me falling asleep.”
Batebi, who is tall and still muscular, smiled sadly: “I used to be an athlete, but my body is in ruins. It is being held together by bits and pieces.”
In prison he suffered kidney damage, ulcers and impaired vision. He was temporarily released last year for medical treatment after suffering a partial stroke, which left him without feeling on one side of his body. The authorities feared he might die in prison, an idea Batebi had grown used to over the years.
After the judge had pronounced the death sentence, his father saved him from despair. He smiled wryly at his son, patted him on the shoulder and said: “You’re not scared are you, my boy?”
“It gave me an extraordinary surge of energy,” Batebi said. “My primary fear had been for my family. After that I didn’t have any more concerns.”
He spent nearly two years in solitary confinement. His interrogators wanted him to beg for a pardon on television, but he refused.
“I wish each and every Iranian could travel abroad, come to the US or go to Europe for just one week, and feel, smell and breathe freedom, human dignity, and realise the value of their lives,” he told Voice of America radio on his arrival.
Be respectful of others and their opinions. Inflammatory remarks and inane leftist drivel will be deleted. It ain’t about free speech, remember you’re in a private domain. My website, my prerogative.
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Hope this guy gets a better platform now to publicly skewer the Iranian madmen. This guys face should be on every other T-shirt in America. If anyone needs to have their face buried in dung it is the Che Guano shirt wearing wanna-be’s.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:51 amI read also from resistants witnesses, (all over EU places against nazy tortures), when the fear of death leaves your imagination, then your becoming “invaincible”
July 20th, 2008 at 1:35 amI am so glad he is here. I wish him well, and I hope he becomes a citizen. And in that pic, he looks better than depp
July 20th, 2008 at 2:52 amI wonder what the libs will do with him.
July 20th, 2008 at 3:40 amHe looks way better than Depp. BHO should meet with Ahmed Batebi. …after he looses the election.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:39 amYa’ll, that’s Patrick Dempsey–x’cept I remember him better from one of my favorite 80’s movies “Can’t Buy Me Love” (the girl was hot). Naturally H’wood remade the movie with the title…
“Love Don Cos’ a Tang”…you fill in the rest. Digressed.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:34 amHumasn Rights advocate is OK, but I would rather that he become a Human Freedom advocate. Human Rights always seems to drive people toward larger Governments and fewer “Rights” for all of us.
July 20th, 2008 at 6:45 amSmelling the air of freedom is cool. But freedom isn’t free. If the average Iranian wants the kind of freedoms that we have, they will have to fight for it. That’s my question. If freedom is a thing to be sought after, are you willing to fight and die for it? Or are you just going to talk about it; while attending or running some Human Rights organization?
All the talking in the world will never stop the Iranian facists in Tehran. If you want to be done with them; then take matters into your own hands and overthrow them.
Otherwise the apostates in Tehran will sacrifice the lives of every Iranian to bring about their Mahdi apocolypse; or the West is faced with the Sophie’s choice of Armagedddon for Europe or Israel or Armageddon for Iran.
Oh, and welcome to America. Go get yourself a pizza and a beer. Enjoy your freedom.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:05 amGood for him. What happened to his family? I hope they didn’t get punished for his escape.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:13 amJi-
July 20th, 2008 at 8:30 amFor starters, they’ll ignore him. Then, if they can use him he will become a celebrity. If not, they will try to discredit him.
How strange, after all the terrible things this man has been through,the important things he has done and said, the only thing these suposedly political babes mention is how good lookin’ he is (or was, 8 years of torture in an iranian prison is bound to leave it’s ravages) I’m not saying they are wrong (he is or was a beautiful man), however, I am more interested in what he had to say about despising those who “want to use Islam to oppress others”. Like any religion, when fundamentalists get into positions of power and twist the religion to their own ends, everyone else suffers. Every major religion has had these moments and yet human kind still continues to get sucked up in this awful cycle. When are we(as a species) gonna learn that government and religion don’t mix. The separation of church and state laid out in the constitution was not a random happenstance, the forefathers knew about the Inquisition, the Salem witch trails, the persecution of the Heugenots(sp?) in france and many other examples too numerous to mention, so they specifically forbade that ANY church should run the country. Pity that doesn’t apply to all the other countries as well. Considering how many of them (Iran etc.etc.) are suffering horribly because of religious fanatics in government. Worse yet these countries are exporting that misery to the rest of the world, not satisfied with oppressing their people, they want to oppress everyone. I’m gonna misquote Barbara Woodhouse (famous dog trainer who holds there are no bad dogs just bad dog owners). There are no bad religions, just bad religious fanatics.
July 20th, 2008 at 9:06 am
Wulf’’s girl 
July 20th, 2008 at 9:41 amOkay. What happened to the posting about Maliki that was up here a few minutes ago?? Why was it taken down.
Rightangle, I agree with you 100%. Read it here.
Dan the Infidel, you should become a regular reader of The Spirit of Man. He posts on resistance activity in Iran all the time. There have been numerous riots, protests, etc. etc.. No full scale revolution yet, but it’s only a matter of time, IMHO.
July 20th, 2008 at 9:55 amTo read the story of his great escape,as told by him, click on this link
http://www.roozonline.com/english/archives/2008/07/the_story_of_the_great_escape.html
To Read a Follow Up Story in The Economist click here:
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11707464
His blog with that symbolic image of his hand in front of the White House can be found here:
July 20th, 2008 at 9:59 amhttp://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-KjyoxDgwc6uQN8Q8PTn1n8dj8oA-?cq=1
Louise I agree, Batebi’s photo should be on a tee-shirt instead of Che’s!!
July 20th, 2008 at 10:03 amthis is a fake resistant :
“Ainsi cette semaine, le célébrissime Batebi (étudiant bassidji) qui était censé être déjà en prison a été ré-arrêté en bas de chez lui. Ce jeune homme était devenu célèbre en exhibant le T-shirt ensanglanté d’une victime réelle de la répression estudiantine du juillet 1999. Il avait alors été condamné à mort ! Mais sa peine avait été réduite suite au récit qu’il avait fait depuis son cachot. Dans ce bouleversant récit, il avait raconté des séances de torture (récit horrifiant que j’avais moi-même traduit quand je militais au sein du mouvement estudiantin pour la démocratie en Iran !).”
http://www.iran-resist.org/article2451
Apparently, these supposed resistants are the next persons who will run Iran, thus are trained in “manipulating” the medias and governments associations
July 20th, 2008 at 10:29 amI get alot of intel on Iranian matters from Islam-watch and all the ex-Muslim Iranians who hang out there. There’s also a ton of other links…some to English/Farsi sites. But thanks for the tip.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:00 amFranchie, can you give us the gist of that in English? It would be much appreciated, but moi, in any case.
July 20th, 2008 at 11:08 amFranchie, are you the guy named Octave, who used to post at ITM?
July 20th, 2008 at 11:09 amLouise, I am afraid that the article wouldn’t get a good translation through net translators (or if there is a good one, I don’t know it)
though i put the link, knowing that many readers of this site can understand the original version
let me know if you want me to translate the bit that I put on board
July 20th, 2008 at 11:14 amLouise, I am a woman, I remember though having seen your pseudo on ME blogs
July 20th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Louise 
I’ve visited your site before but hadn’t noticed that page. I love it! Where there are moonbats there is sure to be plenty of bat-droppings or Guano, and plenty of Che shirts.
July 20th, 2008 at 1:29 pmAhmad, shoma kheili khube. (An affirmation in Farsi.) I hope you become an attorney and fight to protect the U.S. Constitution.
July 20th, 2008 at 3:38 pmdangergirl;
thanks, good stuff.
Dan;
remember the gratitude of the Soviet dissidents for the “words” from Reagan, etc. Many of the Iranian underground are PLEADING for outspoken verbal support from the West. Words have power to move and inspire people. Knowing that you have external like-minded people paying attention is huge.
But Israel and the US should still Bomb Iran, of course.
July 21st, 2008 at 8:31 am