Thursday, January 03, 2008

BREAKING NEWS - Justice at last

USA Federal court has awarded $466 MILLION to the family of Air Force Captain Bayani, a naturalized American of Iranian descent, who was tortured and executed when he went to look after his sick mother in Iran in 1995. Some of the information about the background of this event came from sources that could not be quoted and as such were not included, though AntiMullah was first on the scene (so to speak). What can be added is that the presiding Federal judge on this case broke into tears some three times during the trial, greatly moved by horror of what had been done to this innocent officerf of Iranian origin. As a clean cut, honorable man, he had fled Iran to avoid being executed among the hundreds of other officers who served under the Shah and were massacred for no other reason than their previous service. Having arrived safely in America, he managed to land jobs as hotel security and similar low paying tasks, which did not allow him to make enough to feed his wife and children. Finally, unable to make it financially in the USA with those jobs, when his aging mother fell ill, he decided to go back and try to earn a living over in Iran. He had found himelf a job when he ran afoul of internal politics. First, some jealously spread rumors from the USA informed the clerics that he was a CIA asset and was on their payroll. This sufficed to get him arrested. Next, while he suffered torture and mental anguish in the Mullah prisons, his protestations that had he been paid by the CIA he would not have reached a point of being so impoverished to come back to earn a living in Iran to feed his wife and children. Their retort apparently was that this would be a reason for him to take the risk but they could not find any proof against him, nor would he admit to amything despite severe torture. The final death knell sounded when Hashemi Rafsanjani lost the Presidential race to "reformist" Mohammad Khatami. When the new president, who ran on a kinder. gentler Islam which would not indiscriminately execute people like his predecesor, took office, the still very powerful Rafsanjani promptly executed some dozen prisoners as a poke in the eye to Khatami. Shortly afterward, he had Bayani also executed as another poke in the eye, including to the USA in case the CIA were perhaps involved. There's more that was not made pubic but it crosses the confidentiality line.

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