Tel-Chai Nation

Michelle Malkin has launched a blogburst for the American journalist imprisoned in Iran. From what I've read about her, she does sound like someone worth fighting for. From the Grand Forks Herald:

Iran’s imprisonment of Roxana Saberi is an international outrage, a flagrant violation of the norms of civilized conduct. But it should come as no surprise.

The Iranian government has shown its disregard for those norms before. This latest example should give great pause to the Obama administration, which came in to office plainly willing to give Iran the benefit of the doubt — and now has seen Iran repudiate that gesture as it has so many before, with cynicism and contempt.

Saberi, imprisoned since January, has been convicted of spying, news stories reported Saturday. Now, whenever these kinds of accusations surface, there’s always a chance that the accused is guilty and was caught in the act.

But in this case, that chance seems vanishingly small. There are ways to credibly accuse and convict someone of espionage, but the Iranian court system has not employed them. Just the opposite: It has mocked those norms by disregarding their substance, while using the norms’ vocabulary — “trial,” “attorney,” “defense” and so on — to give the government’s actions a patina of justice.

Here is all one needs to know about justice as it seems to be practiced in modern Iran. The quote is from a story in Sunday’s New York Times:

“Ms. Saberi’s father, Reza Saberi, who came to Tehran two weeks ago from Fargo, N.D., to secure her release, said Sunday that neither she nor her lawyer was aware that the trial was taking place last Monday until after it was under way.

“‘The lawyer was only told to go meet Roxana last Monday,’ he said in a telephone interview. ‘No one knew that they were trying her. Roxana found out 15 minutes into the session that she was being tried.

“‘None of them, neither Roxana nor the lawyer, were ready to defend her.’

“Mr. Saberi said that the trial took less than an hour as he waited outside the courtroom, believing that the lawyer was only meeting his daughter in the presence of the judge.”

So: Saberi didn’t know she was on trial until after the trial started. She met her defense lawyer the very day of her “trial.” Neither Saberi nor her lawyer had any time whatsoever to prepare her defense.

And the proceedings took less than an hour.

No conviction by such a kangaroo court can be believed.

Saberi isn't the only one who's suffered at the hands of Iran's savage courts. An Iranian blogger died in prison:

A young blogger arrested in Iran for allegedly insulting supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an Internet posting has died in prison, his attorney said Friday. The blogger had been jailed for allegedly insulting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an internet posting.

The blogger had been jailed for allegedly insulting Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an internet posting.

Attorney Mohammad Ali Dadkhah said Omid Mir Sayafi, reported to be in his 20s, died in Evin prison, which is located in Tehran and known for its wing that holds political prisoners.

Dadkhah said a fellow inmate, Dr. Hessam Firouzi, called him Wednesday night with the news — and said he believed Sayafi would have lived if he received proper medical care.

Dadkhah said Firouzi, an imprisoned human-rights activist, said that he carried a semi-conscious Sayafi to a prison doctor but that he didn’t receive the care he needed…Sayafi was first arrested in April, then released for 41 days before being arrested again. He was sentenced to 2½ years in prison for comments on a blog that his lawyer argued was intended only for a few friends to read.

That's Iran for you, where they'll let you die.

For more on Saberi, here's a campaign blog dedicated to her cause.

Update: she's in very bad condition after going on a hunger strike in prison (via Hot Air Headlines).

Labels: iran, islam, misogyny