Iranian-Canadian Filmmaker and Journalist Recalls Iran Imprisonment

Hat Tip: Ben

An Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and Newsweek reporter, Maziar Bahari, was imprisoned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard for 118 days this year. This brave man is now speaking out about Iranian protests and the theocratic regime.

Here is a brief excerpt from CBS News about Bahari's will to document Iranian protests and his subsequent imprisonment:

Peaceful demonstrations turned into riots when paramilitary members of the Revolutionary Guard, called the Basij, came on motorcycles, wielding rifles and batons. They laid into the crowd.

Journalists were banned from being anywhere near the demonstrations, so people stole images with cell phones and beamed them to the rest of the world. It was to become the "YouTube revolution."

"The violence. You'd never seen anything like that?" Simon asked Bahari.

"Never," he replied. "I always had a very scary image of the Revolutionary Guards in my head but I didn't know how far they could go."

Bahari took the risk of shooting some pictures, which more than anything else would later get him into trouble with the regime. He filmed a group of demonstrators attacking a base of the Basij, that paramilitary branch of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.

The protestors were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. "Basically they want to take over the Basij base," Bahari explained.

"This isn't a demonstration. It's a riot," Simon remarked, looking at video of the crowds. "And the demonstrators just keep on going."

"That's it," Bahari said.

According to Bahari the Basij, armed with rifles, started firing, shooting down a man who had climbed on a fence.

The man was killed. In all, Bahari said five people were killed during this uprising at the base.

Days later, he watched as Iran's most powerful man, Ayatollah Khamenei, accused the foreign media of fomenting the unrest. The supreme leader warned the demonstrators that if they continued protesting they would be crushed....

Read the full report here. Watch Bahari's interview with CBS here.

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