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What do you do when your imprisoned friends and political allies admit to plotting against the Islamic Republic of Iran in an elaborate and suspiciously scripted series of televised confessions?  What if you're worried you're next?

You could skip town or keep quiet. Or, if you are prominent opposition activist Mohsen Armin, you can try and beat the authorities at their own game by issuing a retraction of any future televised confession in anticipation of your own arrest and possible torture.

Armin, a member of Islamic Revolution Combatants Organization, or the IRCO, posted the renunciation on his website under the glib headline “I look forward to being detained.”

“If the providence of God requires that I will be in jailed as my brethren have been so far and if, in jail and under pressure, I say something against what I have said, be sure that it is not my true belief and that I recanted under pressure," he wrote.

Armin’s comments come amid increasingly vocal criticism of the televised courtroom confessions, described as “show trials” by critics both in Iran and abroad.

The obvious similarities between the confessions have become a running joke among opposition supporters and even inspired a now-viral YouTube parody by Iranian... >>>