THE NEW YORKER

The Iran Show

By Laura Secor

August 24, 2009

Abtahi left, defending himself in court

Mohammad Ali Abtahi: illustration by Tom Bachtell

In the grotesque pageant of Iran’s show trials, former high officials—hollow-eyed, dressed in prison pajamas, and flanked by guards in uniform—sit in rows, listening to one another’s self-denunciations. Since the disputed Presidential elections of June 12th, about a hundred reformist politicians, journalists, student activists, and other dissidents have been accused of colluding with Western powers to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

Abtahi before and after arrest and possibly torture

This month, a number of the accused have made videotaped confessions. But the spectacle has found a subversive afterlife on the Internet. One image that has gone viral is a split frame showing two photographs of former Vice-President Mohammad Ali Abtahi. Before his arrest, on June 16th, he is a rotund, smiling cleric; in court on August 1st, he is drawn and sweat-soaked, his face a mask of apprehension. The juxtaposition belies the courtroom video, making the point that the only genuine thing about Abtahi’s confession is that it was coerced through torture.

Show trials have been staged before, most notably in Moscow in the nineteen-thirties. Typically, such rituals purge élites and scare the populace. They are the prelude to submission. Iran’s show trials, so far, have failed to accrue this fearsome power. In part, this is because the accused are connected to a mass movement: Iranians whose democratic aspirations have evolved organically within the culture of the Islamic Republic. It is one thing to persuade citizens that a narrow band of apparatchiks are enemies of the state. It is quite another to claim that a political agenda with broad support—for popular sovereignty, human rights, due process, freedom of speech—has been covertly planted by foreigners.

Abtahi's blog from the Evin prison, Tehran

The indictments prepared by the public prosecutor are almost surreally obtuse. Before the election, one indictment claims, Western governments, foundations, and individuals joined forces with corrupt Iranians in an attempt to overthrow the Islamic Republic and institute a regime compliant with American designs. The nefarious plotters engaged in “exposing cases of violations of human rights,” training reporters in “gathering information,” and “presenting full information on the 2009 electoral candidates.” Apparently, the Iranian citizen is meant to consider it self-evident that the country’s national interest depends on concealing human-rights abuses, censoring the news, and obfuscating the electoral process.

Forced confessions have been part of Iran’s penal system since the mid-nineteen-seventies. But it was the Islamic Republic that turned the auditorium of Evin Prison, in Tehran, into a macabre theatre. In 1982, after a fierce fight between the extremist theocrats in the government and the radical Muslim guerrillas outside it, the revolutionary regime began broadcasting confessions from Evin. The prisoners—mainly secular leftists and Muslim guerrillas—recanted their views and apologized for betraying Islam.

Ervand Abrahamian, the author of “Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran,” quotes a witness who said of the night a major leftist recanted, “Something snapped inside all of us. We never expected someone of his reputation to get down on his knees. Some commented it was as revolting as watching a human being cannibalize himself.”

Revulsion was, in many ways, the point. Those who confessed not only implicated themselves; they implicated others. They persuaded the public either of the existence of malevolent plots against the state or—more likely—of the state’s ruthlessness in crushing opponents. A few Iranians who confessed even became agents of the state, betraying former colleagues. These repenters became hated figures, and the word for them, tavab, a term of abuse. In an era of warring ideologies, the only meaningful contest was for domination, and the repenters were clearly the losers. In 1988, Iran’s inquisition came to a climax with the systematic execution of thousands of political prisoners.

For more than a decade afterward, forced confessions all but disappeared from the airwaves, not because the regime had softened but because it no longer needed them. When the hard-liners again felt threatened, earlier this decade, bogus confessions reappeared on state television. But by then the tactic was badly matched to the threat, which came from former members of the ruling clique who had mellowed as the revolution entered middle age. Such are today’s defendants. They are not ideological warriors but, rather, reformists who have called for incremental, democratic change.

President Khatami, Leader Kamenei

And so a spectacle that was meant to produce compliance and terror has instead stoked fury and derision. The regime has lost control of the political discussion within Iran, which is focussing on the abuse of prisoners rather than on the perfidy of foreigners or the futility of resistance. On July 31st, Mehdi Karroubi, a reformist cleric and former Presidential candidate, shattered a taboo by airing allegations of rape and sexual abuse inside Iran’s prisons. The authorities responded by shutting down a newspaper that Karroubi published. But the burden of shame had shifted squarely from the prisoners to their wardens. A senior ayatollah praised Karroubi, quoting Muhammad: “A realm will survive without believing in God, but will not survive with oppression.”

Meanwhile, Iranians are turning the show trials into a kind of black comedy, by mocking the predictability of their ugliness. Last month, Mohsen Armin, a prominent reformist, issued a preëmptive statement declaring that, no matter what he might say should he be taken to prison, he is not the agent of foreign powers. Perhaps no one has done more to undermine the effect of forced confessions than Ebrahim Nabavi, an exiled Iranian satirist who has released a parody confession video. Dressed in striped pajamas and wearing bandages, he confesses to meeting with a C.I.A. agent, importing green velvet, and having affairs with Carla Bruni and Angelina Jolie (“She had a very ugly and terrible husband”). He apologizes to the Supreme Leader and to the paramilitaries who “kindly” beat him.

In today’s Iran, the interrogator, not the repenter, has become the object of rage and ridicule. Recanting under pressure, Abrahamian told me, is now seen as a sign not of weakness or treachery but, rather, of “being human.” The display of systemic cruelty is not chilling but galvanizing.

Iran was a radical place in the eighties. Both the regime and much of its opposition were absolutist, utopian, messianic, apocalyptic. Forced confessions, so effective in that climate, convey little more than illegitimacy when they are used against an opposition that is asking for the counting of votes and the rule of law. Today’s show trials are a sign of how much Iran has changed in the past thirty years, and how poorly its regime has kept pace.

Wikipedia facts

Mohammad-Ali Abtahi (Persian: محمدعلی ابطحی‎; born January 27, 1958) is an Iranian theologian, scholar, pro-democracy activist and chairman of the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue. He is a former Vice President of Iran and a close associate of former President Mohammad Khatami. Abtahi is a member of the central council of Association of Combatant Clerics (Majma'e Rowhaniyoon-e Mobarez), the political grouping to which both Khatami and the 2009 presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi (the previous Speaker of Majlis of Iran) belong.

Political career

Early careers

Abtahi served in various governmental posts, including the President of Iranian Radio, Vice Minister of International Affairs in the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and IRIB's representative in Lebanon.

Khatami's Government

In 1997, President of Iran Mohammad Khatami chose Abtahi as his first chief of staff. Abtahi held the position from July 10, 1997 to September 1, 2001.

On September 2, 2001, Abtahi was elevated to the post of the Iranian Vice President for Legal and Parliamentary Affairs. He was the first cabinet member in Iran to write a weblog or have an Orkut account during his membership in the cabinet. He resigned from his post three times after the Iranian Majlis election of 2004, because of "differences in political viewpoints with the parliament's majority", and finally, on October 12, 2004, his resignation was accepted by President Khatami. He was followed by Majid Ansari, a previous representative of Tehran to the Parliament and a fellow member of the Combatant Clerics Society party

The Daily Show appearance

Seyyed Abtahi appeared on The Daily Show with John Stewart in 2009, interviewed by Jason Jones. Abtahi is often called the "blogging mullah" along with Mehdi Karroubi who is referred to as the iron "shaykh of reforms" Seyyed Abtahi is active in the blogosphere and is the first member of an Iranian cabinet to keep a personal blog.

Arrests and confession

Abtahi's father, Ayatollah Hassan Abtahi is the author of several controversial books about Imam Mahdi. Seyyed Hassan's ultra-conservative religious and political views are very different from Mohammad Ali's, who is a liberal cleric. Seyyed Hassan was arrested recently for "suspicious organised activities". Mohammad Ali discussed this in a post to his blog titled Why don't I write about my father and brother's arrest?.

Mohammad Ali Abtahi was arrested on June 16, 2009 during the aftermath of the 2009 presidential elections and subsequent protests. He reportedly made a videotaped confession following his arrest, in which he stated that the opposition's claims of a stolen election were false, and that opposition leaders had conspired in advance to misrepresent the vote. According to the statement, former presidents, Mohammad Khatami and Rafsanjani had taken an oath not to abandon each other in their support for former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi as they prepared to stage a Velvet Revolution in order to avenge their defeat in 2005 Iranian presidential election. According to human rights groups, similar confessions by Iranian political prisoners are almost always obtained under duress.

In response members of his and other arrested reformists gathered at his home issued a statement denouncing his confession, saying “not only do we not accept the confession, we also know that Abtahi said these things due to a long period of imprisonment for the purpose of obtaining a confession.” In a court hearing, his wife Fahimeh Mousavinejad, dismissed her husband’s confession as false and "not at all in Mr. Abtahi’s style. ... As his family, we know the way he expresses himself. Many people have read his blog. The sentences he was using were not his own”.

Abtahi's photos from the trial show signs of probable use of torture during his imprisonment. Following Abtahi's record as the first Iranian cabinet member to blog while in office, on August 26, 2009, he also became the first known Iranian prisoner to blog while still at prison. A few days after that prison blog entry, however, his website was suddenly taken offline.

In November 2009, he was sentenced to six years in jail for the alleged intention to topple the government. He has since been freed.

Personal life

Mohammad Ali Abtahi was born in Mashhad. He is married to Fahimeh Mousavinezhad (daughter of one of his professors) and has three daughters, named Faezeh, Fatemeh, and Farideh. He is also the nephew of Abdolkarim Hasheminezhad.

Health issues

On 14 October 2013, Abtahi was hospitalized in Milad Hospital after he suffered a brain attack. Hours later, Abtahi's personal doctor confirmed that Abtahi's health was good.





Abtahi, Khatami: Amigos para siempre