For most people around the globe, the images of club-wielding men on motorcycles beating demonstrators on the streets of Iran was just another case of brutality in a far-off land. But as he watched the violence of recent weeks unfold on television and YouTube, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, an exiled Iranian, realised he recognised some of the attackers. They were once good friends.
His life, encapsulating the betrayals and disappointments that followed Iran’s tumultuous revolution 30 years ago, as well as the hopes and fears of Iranians now living abroad, had come full circle.
On his well-regarded Persian-language blog, he has listed the names and phone numbers of about a dozen militia members whom he has spotted in photos and in broadcast footage of the demonstrations over his homeland’s disputed presidential election. One of them rang him up in a tizzy. “This is unethical,” his onetime friend told him. Ebrahimi was flabbergasted. “You’re killing people,” he said. “Isn’t that more unethical?”
Why was the 11-year-old spending so much time at the mosque, Ebrahimi’s family would wonder. What was he doing after school, hanging out with the sons of ‘Hezbollahis’?
His father, an air force pilot, was no true believer. But young Ebrahimi was enchanted by the country’s new spirit, lured by the confident young men who signed up to fight. “The boys kept saying, ‘Let’s go to the mosque’, “ he recalled. “There were always displays of guns and grenades there. I liked it.”
In 1987, the 12-year-old Ebrahimi and a friend lied about their ages, evaded their parents and signed up to fight on the front lines during the war’s penultimate year.
“They gave us a little money and a train ticket and told us to report for duty,” said Ebrahimi, who provided photographs showing him as a fresh-faced youngster in uniform.
Ebrahimi returned home and though he hadn’t seen much action, he was hailed as a hero. He signed up for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was accepted into a university, hanging out with like-minded students and veterans.
They met regularly, usually at mosques. Among those he befriended was Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They went on trips together, visiting the resort towns of the Caspian Sea coast on weekends or for holidays. Eventually they would evolve into the group called Ansar-e-Hezbollah, now notorious as the informal shock troops of Iran’s hard-line establishment loyal to the supreme leader.
It was early July 1999, just before the student unrest and crackdown that symbolised the height and the downfall of Iran’s reformist wave under then-President Mohammad Khatami. A week later, Ansar-e-Hezbollah activists stormed the dormitories, killing one student, probably more. Ebrahimi had seen enough and, in a now famous act, waded into a crowd of students to take the podium. “You’re right,” he told the stunned audience. “They’re savage. I’ve resigned.” The students roared with approval.
The next day, he was arrested outside his home, shoved into the trunk of a car and taken to an unknown building, where he was locked in solitary confinement. Even when he was free, Ebrahimi was a marked man, prohibited from leaving the country and facing years of scrutiny by security forces. He had a choice: stay and fight it out with authorities in Iran, or make a run for it.
He escaped to Ankara, the Turkish capital and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees accepted Ebrahimi’s application for asylum. He later moved to Germany, joining the many Iranian dissidents carving out lives abroad.
Ebrahimi had embraced the life of an activist in exile, becoming a valuable asset for Western intelligence agencies and analysts seeking insight on the ways of the Islamic Republic. He was in regular contact with Western officials and a circle of neo-conservative activists.
These days, Ebrahimi spends his time writing his blog and working on a memoir he hopes to sell to Western publishers, stepping out occasionally from his ground-floor apartment for a quick smoke.
Recently, he wrote an open letter to his old friend Mojtaba Khamenei, who is said to be the driving force behind the military-led crackdown on the protest movement.
“We have defended our country, rifle in hands, and have killed to save our country from deterioration,” he wrote. “In those days neither you nor I ever imagined standing up against our own people, unlike what seems to be your cup of tea these days.”
© Los Angeles Times
