Dissident’s Tale of Epic Escape From Iran Grip (Ahmad Batebi)

The New York Times ^ | July 13, 2008 | Scott Shane and Michael R. Gordon

[faq]

WASHINGTON — After three days on the run, Ahmad Batebi picked his way down a rocky slope to the stream that marked Iran’s border with Iraq. His Kurdish guides, who had led Mr. Batebi, an Iranian dissident, through minefields and dodged nighttime gunfire from border guards, passed him to a new team of shadowy human smugglers.

At the age of 31, after nearly eight years in Iranian prisons, subjected to torture and twice taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose, Mr. Batebi had fled.

...

Instead, Mr. Batebi, one of Iran’s best-known dissidents, received permission to enter the United States. He arrived on June 24.

In several lengthy interviews, Mr. Batebi provided an unusual window on Iran under its ruling clerics. His alienation began at age 9, when he witnessed a deadly stoning. He rose to fame in 1999, appearing on the cover of The Economist magazine holding the bloody T-shirt of a fellow student demonstrator — an image he first saw when a judge slapped it before him and declared, “You have signed your own death sentence.” Finally, after a decade of political combat, he reluctantly decided to abandon Iran for an uncertain exile.

[faq]

Here is a link to Batebi's blog.

[gorush]

The obligatory column on an undeniably newsworthy story, now we shall never speak of this again...unless of course he turns out to be a socialist.

[parisa]

Batebi’s escape from Iran is a bombshell in Iranian communities — no one expected it even though all had hoped for it — but it is amazing that it’s only now, and the NYT of all places, that it’s finally made any mention of the daring escape of this iconic symbol of Iranian resistance to mullahs.

In any case it was generally a good article from mullah appeasing leftist paper and a most compelling story of his escape. And even though it was denied I have no doubt that his freedom was an American operation beginning to end.