Google the word Apollo. You will find descriptions of U.S. spaceships and maybe about the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. What you will NOT find is this description from The Guardian news, September 11, 2025:
One particularly barbaric piece of equipment … was Apollo, an electric chair named after the early US space program, which featured a metal helmet that amplified victims’ screams into their own ears.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself, or someone you know and love, in THAT Apollo. What kind of sick system, what kind of sick people, would inflict this pain on other human beings?
This Guardian article delves into a current lawsuit against Parviz Sabeti. He is named as the “chief torturer” under the regime of Shah (King) Mohammad Pahlavi, installed by a bloody CIA coup in 1953. The Shah ruled until 1979 when a revolutionary uprising of the Iranian people overthrew his ass. During his reign, the U.S. trained and financed his secret police, the SAVAK. The lawsuit by three former political prisoners says Sabeti oversaw and personally directed “rape, electric shocks, near drowning, and forced nail extractions.” And yes, many executions of dissidents and revolutionaries. In answer to those who called the Shah a dictator, U.S. President Jimmy Carter casually said “yes but he is our dictator” and he called Iran “an island of stability” shortly before the 1979 revolution. Oops. And a CIA report written in 1978 but only released in 2018 mistakenly assessed that Iran was not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation. Lesson here—the imperialists are very powerful but clearly not ALL powerful, and they too make mistakes.
When our campaign began nearly 5 years ago to free Iran’s political prisoners, many of the organizers, and the Emergency Appeal signatories, knew this history. We knew that the brutal methods, including horrific torture and executions by Iran’s Islamic Republic, are connected to and in many ways, a continuation of what happened under the Shah. But all this doesn’t make the vile crimes of the Islamic fascist regime any more tolerable. And people in Iran have refused to tolerate it with repeated uprisings as recent as the historic Woman, Life, Freedom uprising of 2022 that lasted well into early 2023. It signaled that women’s liberation is nonnegotiable and a measure of any society that is truly free.
You will see from the website of our campaign that from the start, we saw and highlighted the heroism of Iran’s political prisoners. You will hear today from prisoners who are issuing the Bamdar Bidar zine. They are clearly not victims full stop. They say they are not asking for pity but for support of their courageous and continued resistance behind prison walls. They call to us to feel for them, not to feel sorry for them. Think on the important difference. We can learn from their bravery and humanity exemplified in a November 2023 letter by 9 men and women prisoners in Evin. Under dire prison conditions, they found the collective will and the means to immediately call out Israel’s genocide in Gaza that had begun just weeks before, and to struggle for this orientation in the broader movement in Iran.
This is why our campaign stated in our 2021 Emergency Appeal that is signed by over 5,000 people in 50 countries that:
The governments of the U.S. and Iran act from their national interests. And, in this instance, we the people of the U.S. and Iran, along with the people of the world, have OUR shared interests, as part of getting to a better world: to unite to defend the political prisoners of Iran. In the U.S., we have a special responsibility to unite very broadly against this vile repression by the IRI, and to actively oppose any war moves by the U.S. government that would bring even more unbearable suffering to the people of Iran.
We owe a debt to the political prisoners of Iran for their refusal to give up. It is a clarion call to all in our world to fight for justice and a better future. No matter where we are on this planet, if you struggle and hope for a better future, you are linked to Iran’s resisters and political prisoners. Their fight is indeed our fight as we learn from their determination to resist oppression against all odds, not just for themselves, but for others near and far such as the 9 Evin prisoners’ letter. It matters in the imperialist dominated world today that there are those in Iran still striving for liberation. We want to improve their chances of winning their long struggle from all oppressive regimes with our solidarity.
Finally, even as it has temporarily ebbed, there is something important to learn from the furious uprisings of Iran’s rebellious women. The women political prisoners have stood out in determined and creative protests. Iran’s theocrats, as oppressors and patriarchs everywhere, fear and hate them. The Islamic fascist regime is seeking revenge on them as we speak, including with death sentences. The oppressors have their version of “never again” as the people have ours. Woman, Life, Freedom is a fierce battle cry that needs to rise again in Iran—and beyond Iran as part of the people’s shared interest all over the world. A key part of this struggle is to free all of Iran’s political prisoners, stop the rampant executions, and to stop U.S. war threats and aggressions against Iran. It is our special responsibility in the belly of the beast—one we shoulder with honor.
We end with the social media message by our compañeros in Colombia who posted this for the 3rd anniversary of the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising:
Women, Life, Freedom!
After more than four decades of repression, discrimination, oppression and exploitation, the murder of Gina Amini at the hands of the reactionary Islamic Republic of Iran in 2022 transformed accumulated rage into a revolutionary uprising all across Iran. The regime tried to drown it in bloody repression, but the resistance of women to the compulsory hijab, the perseverance of justice-seeking political prisoners, and the resistance by oppressed nationalities have kept the cry of freedom on the lips of millions. But will it be the freedom for exploiters and oppressors to preserve the old regime with new faces in high places, or will it be the freedom of the oppressed to destroy the old order and replace it with something much better?
Free Iran’s political prisoners NOW!
No to imperialist war and genocide in the Middle East!
@QuemarLaJaula
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Read the solidarity statement sent to the gathering by the Burn The Cage/Free The Birds movement in Europe.