A friend of mine called me yesterday and told me a disturbing story. His cousin who had attended the demonstrations in Tehran on Saturday was arrested by the regime militia and together with a number of other captured domnonstrators (4 to 5 of them) were bundled into the back of a van and driven to an unknown location later to be found as half-built or ready to be demoslished housing estates on the side of a motorway (bozorg raah). There a group of masked torturers were waiting for them. They were pushed into a number of dark and dingy rooms where more masked men were waiting for them. The captured demonstrators were subjeted to sever beating, kicking and beaten by truncheon. The unmistakable fact was that some of their torturers were not Farsi speaking: they were speaking with each other in Arabic or a mix of other dialects.
The battered and bruised demostrators were later released in the middle of nowhere. This adds substance to the rumors that some 5000 Palestinian and Syrian crowd beaters have been imported by the regime to counter act any possible crisis of conscious among the security or policemen.
