Pedestrian

As you may know, Sohrab Arabi’s mother was at the council today to discuss her ordeals prior to finding her son. He went missing on the Monday, June 14th, in the “peaceful” Tehran protest. She was bounced continuously between the revolutionary court, hospitals and Evin prison. She even met with the beast’s [Ghazi Mortazavi] deputy who told her he was in Evin. She talks about the badmouthing she would receive. At one point they told her: “the kids are safe and happy eating and sleeping. You mothers are driving yourselves crazy” , “go and find him yourself”.

Her older son went to identify the body and did not come back for hours. At one point, she started to look for her second son.

“My son was a 19 year old kid, who only went out for his vote, he hadn’t lived out any of his dreams … What did he want from this government? from this council? from this country? For what crime was he killed? ”

Sohrab was 19, and his father – a teacher – had died four years earlier due to a brain tumor.

What is important about the deaths we hear about everyday is that we still don’t know how they died. In prison? By torture? Were they wounded among the protesters and left to die? She still doesn’t know how he died. Neither do we.

I am so grateful to the council for giving her this opportunity. Mothers like her can play an extremely important role in a peaceful opposition movement … they have nothing to lose. And the system has nothing more to take from them.

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Notable members of the council are:

Hadi Saei: Two time Olympic gold medalist (Taekwondo)

Mehdi Chamran: brother of Mostafa Chamran. He’s an architect and teaches at the University of Tehran. (He is a hardliner who has repeatedly backed Ahmadinejad on many issues but has mysteriously kept quiet for the past few months)

Mohammad Ali Najafi: Previous head of the MPO (Management and Planning Organization), minster of education under Rafsanjani and an advsier to Karoubi’s presidential campagian.

Abbas Sheybani: Noted physician and staunch Ahmadinejad supporter.

Parvin Ahmadinejad: Mahmoud’s sister

Alireza Dabir: freestyle wrestler. He won a gold medal at the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000, as well as the World Championship in 1998.

Rasool Khadem: freestyle wrestler. Olympic Gold and bronze medalist.

Morteza Talaie: former police chief under mayor Ghalifbaf (moderate hardliner – gotta love all the new tags!).

Ahmad Masjed Jamei: Minister of culture in the Khatami administration

Masoomeh Ebtekar: I call her “dead fish” because … she looks like a dead fish! She headed the environmental protection agency under Khatami.