The Iranian documentary film maker, Hossein Dehbashi, who had been held in prison isolation for two months on trumped up, politically motivated charges, has been released from detention after he suffered a stroke while in custody.

Speaking of his ordeal after being set free and allowed return home this weekend ,Dehbashi ,38, told his website readers how for two years previous to his arrest he had been under regular state surveillance , his house had been raided repeatedly , and he had been subjected to several bouts of interrogation by agents of the country's internal security service .

Ominously, three months before his arrest, state security officials raided Dehbashi's house and took away his passport; then, on June 6, the notorious internal security police returned and arrested the film-maker on the grounds of alleged "irregularities with documentations".

In a prison system that has been internationally condemned for its brutal treatment of inmates and the sadism of its guards - who are frequently drawn from the country's religiously fanatic right wing - Dehbashi was, according to his supporters, held "under tremendous pressure". He was, they say, threatened repeatedly in the course of a series of interrogations with a ten year prison sentence if he didn't admit to fabricated charges and cooperate fully with the authorities.

Those familiar with the jail where Dehbashi was confined describe a regime of unrelieved misery for inmates, with frequent acts of random brutality from zealous baton-wielding jailers who maintain strict surveillance over detainees at all times. Prisoners in the solitary confinement "blocks" are allowed out of their windowless cells for only one hour a day, receiving their meals through small portholes in cell doors. Joanna Weschler, director of prison projects at the international advocacy organization, Human Rights Watch, has described conditions in such jails as "very cruel."

Relieved relatives and supporters said on Dehbashi's return home that they had refrained from highlighting the film-maker's detention before his release from prison fearing their efforts on his behalf might further worsen the harsh and inhumane conditions he was already being held under. Interviewed over the weekend , one supporter, the documentary director Mohammad Shakibania , accused the country's judicial system of colluding actively in the state ill-treatment of Mr Dehbashi saying that lawyers "refused to defend him during the two months that he spent in jails, until he suffered from a stroke last week ."

Critics of the callous arrest and incarceration of Hossein Dehbashi say they have no doubt that the authorities were motivated by political concerns when they arrested him and that the charges of fabricating documents leveled against Dehbashi were themselves spurious and fabricated: for two years prior to his detention the internationally acclaimed film-maker had been conducting a series of interviews with long-standing opponents of Iran's current regime.

Since the film-maker's return to Iran, the US State Department and FBI have both issued statements denying that Mr Dehbashi was ill-treated while in custody at the FBI's super-maximum security institution in Baltimore, Maryland.

 http://business.maktoob.com/20090000503512/Iran_filmmak...e.htm
 http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/15/us/study-finds-abuse-....html

 http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jHdW...vd-lw