THE SUNDAY TIMES: IT WAS his British passport that consigned a young writer to three days of torture. The man, who has asked to be identified only as Reza, was arrested in Tehran during an anti-government protest, beaten and threatened with death for being a “British spy”.
His broken nose and ribs have started to heal but the psychological scars remain, even though he is now safely back in London.
The 30-year-old’s story is one of the few to emerge from the prisons in which, international groups say, thousands of men and women arrested since the disputed June 12 presidential election have been held.
Reza, whose real name is being withheld to protect his family in Tehran, has lived in Britain since childhood but travelled to Iran last month for a writing project.
He voted for Mir Hossein Mousavi, the presidential candidate who claims that his defeat by the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rigged. Reza joined the hundreds of thousands who poured onto the streets to protest.
On June 20, the day after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, endorsed Ahmadinejad’s victory, Reza was leaving a demonstration when two militia men blindfolded him and bundled him onto the back of a motorcycle. >>> Marie Colvin | Sunday, July 19, 2009
