Ahmad Batebi Essay

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Anderson Cooper interviews human-rights activist Ahmad Batebi, who discusses his imprisonment in Iran and his escape. It is a story that the Iranian government definitely doesn’t want you to hear about. The story of a man who risked his life to tell. His name is Ahmad Batebi, and by accident he became one of the most famous dissidents in Iran. He says that he endured years of torture in an Iranian prison, after his picture appeared on the cover of the “Economist” magazine. He just escaped from Iran last year, and told in a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper he recounted what he had to go through to escape and survive. Ahmad Batebi never intended to be famous. He wanted to be a photo journalist, but it was a picture of him that changed his life and almost got him killed. In July 1999, a demonstration rocked Tehran. Outraged by a government dissent, students took to the streets. Batebi, a film major at Tehran University joined in. When police fired into the crowd, a student standing next to him was shot. While he was trying to help his friend, he took of his shirt trying to keep the blood in his body. After he took his friend to the medical center, he returned to the protest. He waved the bloody shirt in the air to show what the police had done. That is when a photographer took a photo of Batebi that would appear on the cover of the “Economist” that would make its way around the world. Little did he know that standing up for what he believed in was going to possibly get him killed. Just days after the picture appeared, the government arrested him. Taking him into a prison for intelligence, he was in solitary confinement for months. After seven or eight months he had a court trial and they didn’t tell him where he was going. They blindfolded him, which he thought this was just a part of his questioning. They took off his blindfold and that is when the Judge

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