Ahmad Batebi

Ahmad Batebi (born July 25, 1977) is an Iranian activist who was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

During his studies at the University of Tehran he gained international fame for his appearance on the July 17, 1999, cover of The Economist magazine, holding up a shirt splattered with the blood of a fellow protester.

The photo, which has been called "an icon for Iran's student reform movement", was taken during the Iranian Student Protests in July 1999 in Tehran.

Following its publishing, Batebi was arrested, tried in closed-door proceedings, found guilty of "creating street unrest", and sentenced to death.

This was reduced to 15 years after domestic and international outcry.

Less well-known are persistent reports of torture and ill-treatment of Batebi in prison and his resulting poor physical and mental health.

While temporarily released from prison to receive medical attention, Batebi was assisted by the KDPI, to flee Iran for Iraq.

The student protests of 1999 began on July 7 with peaceful demonstrations in Tehran against the closure of the reformist newspaper, Salam.

This was followed by an attack on a student dormitory that night by vigilantes and riot police in which a student was killed.

This sparked six days of demonstrations and rioting in which at least three more people were killed and more than 200 injured.

A photojournalist for Jame'e newspaper, Jamshid Bayrami, took the Economist cover photo then.

In the photograph, Batebi waves a bloody T-shirt above his head.

The shirt belonged to the student standing next to Batebi, who had been shot.

"The bullet hit the wall and ricocheted back into my friend's shoulder. I heard the bullet go by my face," Batebi recalled.

"It sounded like a bumblebee going by my ear."

To staunch the bleeding, Batebi removed his friend's shirt to put pressure on the wound.

He then helped transport his friend to a medical facility.

Returning to the protest with the bloody shirt, he displayed it to the protesters to warn them of the shooting.

Batebi was initially arrested in connection with the protests several days after the publication of the Economist photograph.

He was held without charges for about seven months when he was brought to trial.

At the trial, the judge showed Batebi the Economist photograph.

It was the first time he had seen it.

"With this picture, you have signed your death sentence," Batebi recalls the judge told him.

Batebi describes the trial as follows:

"[The judge] said, 'You have defaced the face of the Islamic Republic that represents God on earth. You have defaced it around the world. And therefore, you have to be sentenced to death.' It took less than three minutes."

He and many other protesters were brutally tortured.

In prison, Batebi wrote of beatings by guards:

I resisted and punched one of them in the face.

At this point, they took me and ducked my head into a closed drain full of excrement.

They held me under for so long I could not hold my breath any longer, and excrement was inhaled through my nose and seeped into my mouth.
During the interrogations, they threatened several times to execute me and to torture and rape my family members as well as imprison them for long terms.

He was one of four people who received a death sentence in a closed-door trial by a Revolutionary Court on charges relating to "creating street unrest" and "agitating people to create unrest," and "endangering national security" following the demonstrations.

Batebi, in an open letter addressed to the judiciary, wrote that he had been beaten in his "testicles, legs, and abdominal area. When I protested, they answered that this is the land of the Velayat and that I should be blinded and not live here."

Following an outcry from Iranians and international human rights groups, his death sentence was commuted to a 15-year prison term by Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

Upon appeal in early 2000, the sentence was further reduced to 10 years.

Around March 2005, Batebi was temporarily released from Evin Prison to get married.

He failed to report back to prison.

On June 23, 2005, a newspaper interview reported him "currently on the run, avoiding the authorities in Iran".

Batebi was re-arrested on July 27, 2006, and re-imprisoned.

He finally entered the United States on June 24, 2008, on humanitarian parole.

He was then granted asylum status by the United States government.