Repression has a familiar face

BERLIN —

For most people around the globe, the images of club-wielding men on motorcycles beating demonstrators on the streets of Iran was just another case of brutality in a far-off land.

But as he watched the violence of recent weeks unfold on television and YouTube, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, an exiled Iranian, realized he recognized some of the attackers.

They were once good friends.

His life, encapsulating the betrayals and disappointments that followed Iran's tumultuous revolution 30 years ago, as well as the hopes and fears of Iranians now living abroad, had come full circle.

Once a lonely young man in exile, a rejuvenated Ebrahimi is now using his experience as an insider within Iran's hard-line militias to "out" members of the group. On his well-regarded Persian-language blog, he has listed the names and phone numbers of about a dozen militia members whom he has spotted in photos and in broadcast footage of the demonstrations over his homeland's disputed presidential election. One of them called him in a tizzy. "This is unethical," his onetime friend told him.

Ebrahimi was flabbergasted. "You're killing people," he said. "Isn't that more unethical?"

A young zealot

Why was the 11-year-old spending so much time at the mosque, Ebrahimi's family would wonder. What was he doing after school, hanging out with the sons of "Hezbollahis," Islamic radicals who had dominated the country after the 1979 revolution?

His father, an air-force pilot, was no true believer. After returning from lengthy stints at the front of the Iran-Iraq war, he would immediately shed his fatigues, shave off his beard and curse those who headed the war effort as incompetent fanatics.

But young Ebrahimi was enchanted by the country's new spirit, lured by the confident young men who signed up to fight. "The boys kept saying, 'Let's go to the mosque,' " he recalled. "There were always displays of guns and grenades there. I liked it."

In 1987, the 12-year-old Ebrahimi and a friend lied about their ages, evaded their parents and signed up to fight on the front lines during the war's penultimate year.

"They gave us a little money and a train ticket and told us to report for duty," said Ebrahimi, who provided photographs showing him as a fresh-faced youngster in uniform.

One day, his father came to the base. He approached his son, slapped him hard on the face, then walked away without saying a word.

Befriended Khameini

After 10 months, Ebrahimi returned home, and though he hadn't seen much action, he was hailed as a hero. The gawky teenager began writing patriotic pieces for a youth magazine called Surah, catching the attention of hard-line groups. He signed up for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and was accepted into a university, hanging out with like-minded students and veterans.

They met regularly, usually at mosques. They studied literature called "Program of the Guardianship," which included lessons about Islam and politics, and depicted their political rivals — including reformists — as enemies of God, in effect giving themselves permission to kill their foes without committing a sin.

"We were brainwashed," Ebrahimi said. "We thought that these people had taken up swords and were going against Islam."

Among those he befriended was Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They went on trips together, visiting the resort towns of the Caspian Sea coast on weekends or for holidays.

Eventually they would evolve into the group called Ansar-e Hezbollah, now notorious as the informal shock troops of Iran's hard-line establishment loyal to the supreme leader.

The way Ebrahimi had envisioned it, Ansar-e Hezbollah was a political and cultural organization. So why were they talking about beating people? He didn't like that.

"They're savage"

It was early July 1999, just before the student unrest and crackdown that symbolized the height and the downfall of Iran's reformist wave under then-President Mohammad Khatami. Ebrahimi's Ansar-e Hezbollah colleagues wanted to crush the students. He urged restraint, hoping the movement would burn itself out.

A week later, Ansar-e Hezbollah activists stormed the dormitories, killing one student, probably more. Ebrahimi had seen enough and, in a now-famous act, waded into a crowd of students to take the podium.

"You're right," he told the stunned audience. "They're savage. I've resigned."

The students roared with approval.

The next day, he was arrested outside his home, shoved into the trunk of a car and taken to an unknown building, where he was locked in solitary confinement. During grueling interrogations, he suffered a broken chin and hand, and was hung by his feet and beaten.

Activist in exile

He had a choice: stay and fight it out with authorities in Iran, or make a run for it.

The hike across the mountainous border with Turkey was long and dangerous. In Ankara, the Turkish capital, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees accepted Ebrahimi's application for asylum. He enrolled at a university, fell in love and moved to Germany, joining the many Iranian dissidents carving out lives abroad.

Ebrahimi had embraced the life of an activist in exile, becoming a valuable asset for Western intelligence agencies and analysts seeking insight on the ways of the Islamic Republic. He was in regular contact with Western officials and a circle of neoconservative activists.

He and other Iranian and Western activists enticed Iranian officials to defect to the West. The group played a key role in the defection of Brig. Gen. Ali Reza Asgari, a former Iranian deputy defense minister who left via Turkey, taking a trove of secrets about Iran's weaponry and technology with him.

These days, Ebrahimi spends his time writing his blog and working on a memoir he hopes to sell to Western publishers, stepping out occasionally from his ground-floor apartment for a quick smoke.

Recently, he wrote a letter to his old friend Mojtaba Khamenei, who is said to be the driving force behind the military-led crackdown on the protest movement.

"We have defended our country, rifle in hands, and have killed to save our country from deterioration," he wrote. "In those days neither you nor I ever imagined standing up against our own people, unlike what seems to be your cup of tea these days."