Marzieh Hashemi, an International Role Model

By Stephen Lendman
Source

Released by the FBI after enduring cruel and unusual mistreatment in illegal detention for 10 days, Marzieh, a US and Iranian citizen, was joyously welcomed home by supporters on arrival at Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport Wednesday evening.

Arrested and detained under harsh conditions on the spurious pretext of being a material witness in a criminal case her family knows nothing about. 

Flagrantly abusing her was most likely all about US hostility toward Iran for its sovereign independence and opposition to Washington’s imperial agenda.

It was also related to how Press TV and Marzieh operate, truth-telling their mandate on vital issues, standing for peace, equity and justice, polar opposite US-led Western major media managed news misinformation and disinformation – the official narrative drowning out what everyone most needs to know.

The Trump regime’s scheme backfired. Marzieh’s arrest and mistreatment became an international cause celebre, attracting major media attention. Supportive public demonstrations were held in her behalf, what very likely saved her, along with her son witnessing her unlawful arrest.

Otherwise the FBI could have disappeared her, never to be seen or heard from again, no one knowing what happened – what can happen to anyone US authorities target anywhere worldwide, what did happen and continues happening to thousands of innocent victims of US imperial viciousness.

Nearly all Guantanamo detainees committed no crimes, unlawfully held uncharged and untried, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR earlier saying:

“The vast majority of the men at Guantanamo should never have been detained in the first place…seized in broad sweeps and sold to the US (for) substantial bounties.”

The same goes for nearly all detainees at other US torture prisons, operating globally, individuals unjustly abducted and wrongfully imprisoned, held longterm, grossly mistreated, denied habeas rights, due process, and equal protection under law.

Americans are as vulnerable as others abroad. The Bush/Cheney regime targeted people’s lawyer, civil and human rights champion, justice warrior Lynne Stewart for defending a client they wanted imprisoned, falsely charging him with a crime he didn’t commit.

Lynne was wrongfully charged under the 1996 Antiterrorism Act on four counts of aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, along with violating Special Administrative Measures (SAMS) imposed by the US Bureau of Prisons.

Her show trial was a travesty of justice. At the time, then-National Lawyers Guild President Michael Avery said the Justice Department “was resolute from day one in making a symbol out of Lynne Stewart in support of its campaign to deny people charged with crimes of effective legal representation.”

Her case was precedent-setting, chilling, and according to former Center for Constitutional Rights President Michael Ratner, sent “a message to lawyers who represent alleged terrorists that it’s dangerous to do so.”

Her attorney Michael Tigar called her conviction and imprisonment “an attack on a gallant, charismatic and effective fighter for justice,” adding: “I have never seen such an abuse of government power.”

Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the imperial state for doing the right thing, she was freed on December 31, 2013 by a compassionate release order because of her terminal breast cancer diagnosis, at the time given months to live – surviving until March 7, 2017.

In 2010, neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui was convicted and imprisoned for being a Muslim in America at the wrong time, a war OF terror victim, brutally tortured and mistreated in detention. She committed no crimes. No evidence suggested any. 

She remains imprisoned longterm, the life and well-being of a brilliant, soft-spoken, religious Pakistani/American destroyed by the imperial state.

She was falsely called an al-Qaeda operative and facilitator, outrageously accused of involvement in biochemical warfare, including (nonexistent) planned attacks against the Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, and Wall Street – along with terrorist recruiting and other phony charges, not a shred of evidence supporting any of them.

She was disappeared for over a year with no information on her whereabouts released, brutally tortured and raped in captivity, transformed into a zombie from her horrific ordeal.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

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