Dictatorship Learn From Each Other.
The ruling elite in Tehran have been quick to follow China’s example of locking up human right’s lawyers, the LA Times reports:
“According to his colleagues, Dadkhah has been under heavy pressure to publicly confess to being involved in a nefarious plot against the Islamic Republic
Specifically, his interrogators wanted him to betray the the Center for the Defense of Human Rights, the small nonprofit organization he runs with Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi, and to state that Ebadi was a traitor.
According to fellow lawyers who got a chance to meet with him, he was severely abused during the first days of his imprisonment in solitary confinement in early July.
For two days, he was deprived of food. Then he was blindfolded and thrown down a spiral stairwell. For a few days, he was barred from using the bathroom.
He was told that his teenage daughter was also under arrest, only to find out later it was a lie.
Still, he refused to budge.
After a while, the interrogators gave up. They allowed him to leave solitary and stay in a ward with other prisoners. “
ModernityBlog 
The Dutch have certainly learnt something though: they got rid of Ramadan from his Rotterdam posts because of his Press TV and Iranian links.
Funny it’s not been all over the British press – not a peep in the print Guardian, where he’s a regular columnist.
Andrew Coates
24/08/2009 at 16:10
But then again the chattering classes and liberals at the Guardian are hardly going to take on PressTV for racism, as they haven’t got a clue about it.
modernityblog
24/08/2009 at 23:14