Iran: human rights lawyer Shadi Sadr kidnappeD

July 18, 2009

The evil continues unabated in Iran. According to the International Campaign for Human Rights, human rights lawyer SHADI SADR was forcibly abducted in front of witnesses on her way to Friday prayers. She was doing nothing but walking when people “in civilian clothes” shoved her into a car and drove off. She was allowed to call her husband and told him that she had been arrested and was being detained in Evin prison. It must not have been much of a surprise since the Iranian Gestapo had searched their home and then took keys so they could do it to her law office. CNN (said she was beaten as well but doesn’t say where. Ms Sadr has medical problems requiring medication and was due to be operated on next week.

And she is not the first human rights lawyer to be arrested. Several others, including ABDOLFATTAH SOLTANI, KAMBIZ NOUROUZI and MOHAMMED ALI DADKHAH, have been detained. I imagine they’re men. What does it say when the government is publicly arresting folks who are well-known in the international community as protectors of human rights?

At Friday prayers, as was expected, cleric and former President ALI AKBAR HASHEMI RAFSANJAMI called for Iranian intelligence and security forces to release illegally detained protesters – as many as 2000 have been rounded up in the month since the “election”.

The response?

Tear gas, beatings and more arrests.

Witnesses state 40 people were beaten and shoved in car trunks and hauled off…to where? Prison? A dark alley? A community grave? A gallows? A beheading square?

Who is supplying the tear gas?

An email sent out of Iran to Radio Free Europe on July 2nd said the Basij were torturing folks by forcefully urinating down their throats.

What kind of savages think up such things?

And if they are doing that to men – what are they doing to women and children whose abuse is already sanctioned? What did they do to the woman and children pilgrims who were beaten and arrested while they were praying at a sacred shrine?

Is nothing sacred?

Why is this being allowed to continue?

Imagine the growing frustration of the Iranian citizens, who did their part to get the world’s attention, but have watched the world ignore them. Amnesty International said the UN and the Human Rights Council haven’t gone there to investigate the atrocities.

What is taking so long? The protests started on June 12.

And who really knows what is going on there? No foreign journalists have been allowed in, there’s no internet access and the government is tracking cellphone traffic.

How many innocent law-abiding citizens who took video and uploaded it to YouTube have been detained?

Have they found the person who videotaped NEDA AGHA SOLTAN’s murder?

What have they done to Neda’s friend who accompanied her and who was also standing by peacefully?

It’s absolutely miraculous that the Iranian doctor, who was at Neda’s side when she shot down like an animal made it out to tell the world what he witnessed. No. There are no coincidences. What has been done to his elderly parents who live in Tehran? Other family members? His business partners? His neighbors? The last UK Embassy worker they are holding as punishment because the doctor talked to the BBC and lives in the UK? No one watching the doctor’s video testimony could rationally question it. The look of horror on his face cannot be faked nor can his description of survivor’s guilt. And he came forward knowing full well what would happen to him and those left behind in Iran.

And what happened to the folks who disarmed and took the papers off the Basij murderer – who spontaneously admitted that he “didn’t mean to kill her“? Were they able to transmit his picture and/or his identity papers? He certainly knows what they look like and certainly has the motive to find and then silence them.

How many people have been tortured to death?

Why is the Arab World standing by and allowing this to happen other than that’s what they always do?

Are they that impotent? Are they that afraid of that evil little Hitler and the Supreme “Holy” man, who sanctions violence and uses “prayer services” to incite Death to America! propaganda?

One thing has been made perfectly clear by the unprovoked bombings of Israel by Hamas – who is surrounded on all sides and cannot perpetuate evil unless they are directly aided by another Arab country – and the violence in Iran – the Arab World is not interested in peace. They are not interested in stopping the violence. They prefer to remain savages rooted in the stone age.