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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=10ED4835-A503-433A-A7D3-55909E888A5C

“One Day in the Life of Amir Abbas Fakhravar”
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, November 12, 2007

“[Editor’s Note: the following profile is on Amir Abbas Fakhravaris, the Annie Taylor Award recipient at this year’s Restoration Weekend, Nov. 15-18].”

ARTICLE SNIPPET: “Fakhravar has paid terribly for his heresies. Sentenced to eight years in prison in 2001 for his involvement in the student movement, Fakhravar served four consecutive years, including eight months in solitary confinement when he was subjected to “white torture,” a form of sensory deprivation in which he was locked in a windowless cell, denied all human contact, and was surrounded by white (including white walls, white clothes and even white rice for food).

Even worse than the torture was the mental anguish. “Day in an day out, the interrogators would say, ‘You will never see the blue sky again.’ ‘You will never see the moon again.’ ‘You will be buried here.’” At night, Fakhravar would have nightmares, his mind racing with images that the prison walls closing in, burying him. Terrified, he would awake in a cold sweat.

Most dispiriting, however, was what happened before he went to prison. Fakhravar recalls being beaten up and thrown in jail for three days. Finally, a judge finally came to see him. Fakhravar protested his detention, but the judge showed no interest in his case. “Remember,” he recalls the judge sneering at him, “those who cross the line deserve to die.” “When you hear that from a judge, you lose hope,” Fakhravar says. In the end, he was sentenced without trial, or even so much as an opportunity to plead his case. The official charge: “Insult to the Supreme Leader,” the Ayatollah Khamenei.”