Jailed Iranian Ayatollah Calls Regime 'Worse and More Evil than ISIS or the Taliban'

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Jailed Iranian Ayatollah Calls Regime 'Worse and More Evil than ISIS or the Taliban'

by Stephen Schwartz
The Weekly Standard Blog
November 11, 2014

http://www.islamicpluralism.org/2424/jailed-iranian-ayatollah-calls-regime-worse

A document by Ayatollah Boroujerdi released in October, on the the anniversary of his 2006 arrest, asked how Tehran could "condemn and declare jihad against armed radical groups [i.e. ISIS and the Taliban] who are slaughtering and spreading violence and terror in the name of the Prophet's caliphate, but forget about those [in Iran] who are nourishing terrorists in neighboring countries."

Referring to the Iranian authorities as "fascistic," he wrote, "the outcome of thirty five years of the ruling Islamic Republic in Iran has been that of censorship of the media, disappearance of freedom of thought, development of large prisons, rejection of intellectuals, and the oppression of religious opinions. . . . The only thing that remains in our looted country is the war machine."

In July of this year, Ayatollah Boroujerdi was threatened in Evin prison, in his own recounting, by Mohammad Movahedi, a former prosecutor for Iran's Special Clerical Tribunal, and now a judge. Movahedi told Boroujerdi, reportedly, that if he did not go on national television to apologize to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he would be moved to solitary confinement under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and "eliminated."

According to the followers of Ayatollah Boroujerdi outside Iran, the nonconforming man of faith was transferred from the Evin lockup to an unknown place at the beginning of October. The official action came after Boroujerdi addressed a letter to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, dated September 22, in which he asked, "[R]espected members of this assembly; as you are gathered together please hear the cries of the Iranian people. . . . Do you not see that Iran is ruled by tyranny?"

Ayatollah Boroujerdi's disciples were concerned that the move to an undisclosed location presaged his execution, but he was returned to Evin, where he declared his hunger strike. This latest protest takes place even as he suffers from a range of medical problems.

In a 2008 "complaint" addressed to the world powers, Ayatollah Boroujerdi named Russia and China as accomplices of Tehran, specifying, "It is obvious to everyone that extensive support by Russia and China have increased the internal dictatorship in Iran." He appealed for assistance to the pope, to Jewish intellectuals (for whom he had expressed his respect previously), and to Islamic religious leaders, concluding, "Governments on the side of the religious regime of Iran, be informed that all of you are sharing in massacre of our poor people."

It is shameful to imagine that the United States, which Ayatollah Boroujerdi had refrained previously from criticizing, may now be added to the tally of countries abetting the cruelties of the Iranian state, thanks to the "diplomatic" initiatives of the Obama administration. U.S. leaders should heed the voices from Evin and other Iranian prisons, rather than the deceptive manipulations conveyed by the regime's public representatives.