We hade just returned from my aunt's one night when the Revolutionary Guards burst into our home in Iran.
Shoving my little sister and me up against the wall, they threatened to execute us right there. My mother and 11-year-old brother were crying. The guards searched every corner of our house, looking for evidence that we were cooperating with the Mojahedin opposition, which seeks the overthrow of Iran's Islamic government.All the while, the guards were shouting and swearing, threatening to kill us all if we did not cooperate. Finally, we were dragged outside and driven to Evin Political Prison, where the horrors never cease. I was 17.
They never did find the evidence, but I spent the next four years of my life in that jail. They kept my little sister for 10 3/4 years. Two of my brothers were executed, and my parents died of broken hearts.
Now, once again, I am locked up, not in Iran, but in the United States of America, where I took refuge from the mullahs and was granted political asylum in 1995.
I call out to you for justice, from my cell in a rural Alabama prison. I call out to you as a woman who has been tortured and humiliated by the forces of darkness. I call out to you as someone who, despite it all, never, not even for a minute, regretted taking the path of freedom.
Is it a coincidence that after six years of living in this country, I find myself in a cell just when the U.S. government is seeking to improve relations with the terrorist rulers of Iran? Or am I a pawn in a political game?
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has charged me with trying to "liberate Iran." The INS intends to terminate my asylum and deport me to Iran, where I will certainly suffer more torture and would be executed.
At issue is my affiliation with the Iranian opposition movement before I came to the United States. The U.S. State Department has classified the Mojahedin as a terrorist group.
If the INS considers it a crime to strive for freedom, I freely admit my guilt. I am proud to have done whatever I could to liberate my country and my people.
I will continue to strive to free the women of Iran, who are denied their most rudimentary rights and considered not as second-class citizens but as subhuman. That is a grouping I experienced firsthand, as a woman political prisoner in Iran.