JL Wall reflects on the case of American journalist Roxana Saberi who was sentenced to eight years in prison last week for “espionage":
Regardless of guilt or innocence, she’s a political prisoner in Iran. And, despite Ahmadinajad’s best open-collared posturing, nothing’s going to make that a safe or pleasant experience. Iranian political prisoners exist as individual human beings only at the mercy of the state, and history has shown that this is a state with a short supply of mercy.
She’s being held in Evin Prison, compared to a “torture chamber” by its former residents, and Amnesty International has noted a “risk of torture or other ill-treatment” for those held there.
And the US will have a hard time complaining about mistreatment as it justifies its own torture of detained terror suspects.