Today a French man, Benjamin Briere, will appear in front of the Revolutionary Court on charges of spying and acting against national security after having been in Mashhad prison for 20 months. This is of course a massive coup for the Iranian regime. Not because a tourist taking drone footage in the desert and publishing it on Instagram is a master spy but because the regime has netted yet another foreigner in its battle to get as many ‘spies’ as possible; human bargaining chips being the currency it needs to conduct its ‘negotiations’ with other countries. This is the regime’s preferred method of getting their real criminals out of prisons abroad or pressuring other governments into concessions.
Somewhere in the dark corridors of the malignant power that is the Iranian regime, is probably a list with the most wanted nationalities to imprison for future use. I guess the highly thought-out process is: arrest first, check nationality, then choose one or more from the following charges: a) spying b) acting against national security.
The pain and desperation of family and friends abroad or within Iran of those who are in the fangs of the Iranian regime is immeasurable as they are facing a system of arbitrariness and abuse. Despite the pain inflicted, or indeed because of it, a staunch resistance against the regime is growing everywhere. The regime is surrounded on all sides and it’s running out of options having underestimated human resilience in the face of terror.
Patty Debonitas
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