Iran tortured this Marine — but the US government won’t do anything about it
It turns out Iran’s government was torturing former Marine Amir Hekmati for much of the 4½ years it held him hostage. The Obama administration apparently doesn’t care, so Hekmati has filed a lawsuit against the Tehran regime.
The suit is a chilling read. Arrested in January 2011 while visiting his grandma, Hekmati faced solitary confinement for the next 17 months.
His captors routinely whipped the bottom of his feet, Tasered him in the kidneys and beat him with batons. Glaring lights and a well-watered floor kept him from sleeping.
They also dosed him with Lithium and other addictive substances, then put him through withdrawal.
He faced psychological torture, too — “news” that his sister was dead, but he couldn’t talk to his family unless he confessed to espionage; a death sentence from a kangaroo court, and more.
Meanwhile, the State Department was pushing his family to stay quiet — warning that US media attention to the case would put him in greater danger.
The lawsuit faces tough sledding: Only this year did the Supreme Court open the door for families of service members killed in the 1983 attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and other Iran-sponsored atrocities to collect on their own successful suits from $2 billion in frozen Iranian funds.
Released with two other American hostages in January, Hekmati’s mainly trying to get his life back together.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, is too busy trying to meet Iran’s new demands under the nuclear deal to even think about seeking justice for an American citizen who served his nation with honor.t
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