U.S. Push for Democracy Could Backfire Inside Iran

Baghi said a friend in Europe approached him 16 months ago with a proposal to send members of the group to Dubai for a "human rights workshop." The friend gave the impression the United Nations was involved, Baghi said.

Unable to attend because authorities continue to withhold his passport, Baghi sent three other members of the rights group: his wife, Fatehmeh Kamali; their adult daughter, Maryam Baghi; and Ali Afsahi, a cleric turned film critic. Kamali's nephew, Ehsan, a law student who lived with them, went along for the ride, Baghi said.

By all accounts, the workshops did not go well. "They were very angry about this trip," Baghi wrote his friend in an e-mail. "They felt offended and insulted."

Quoting his wife, who was not available to be interviewed because of her interrogation, Baghi said the workshops offered only rudimentary training in human rights. Other sessions highlighted popular revolts in Serbia, Ukraine and elsewhere. The three Iranians were the only participants and were moved from one hotel to another by the organizers, who conjured an air of cloak and dagger, Baghi said.

"You know what a vulnerable situation we have here in Iran," Baghi wrote. "It was not a good thing to invite us to such a workshop."

Peter Ackerman, who chairs the Washington group that ran a portion of the workshops, took issue with Baghi's description. Ackerman said the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict promotes the potential of nonviolent change by highlighting experiences in formerly oppressive countries, as depicted in the film "A Force More Powerful," which was screened in Dubai.

Baghi's group left Dubai early, saying the workshops were not what they had expected. Back in Iran, their attendance brought no immediate repercussions, even though it apparently was known to government security services. Baghi said the intelligence office of the Higher Education Ministry asked his daughter about the trip while vetting her for a graduate degree four months ago.

Then on Feb. 12, with reports emerging in Washington of the Bush initiative, Afsahi was taken into custody. Ehsan Kamali, the law student, was detained at a filling station four days later. Both remain in solitary confinement in Evin Prison in the north of Tehran, their condition unknown.

Baghi's wife and daughter were summoned to a prosecutor's office last Tuesday, when a Washington Post reporter arriving for a previously scheduled appointment found Baghi cursing Bush. The women were questioned into the night for three days by deputies of the Tehran prosecutor, Said Mortazavi, the government's most widely feared enforcer.

Diplomats said pressure on individuals has increased since the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president and the showdown over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"The people who did this workshop don't realize what kind of world we live in here," Baghi said. "Here, we've got Mortazavi and the system behind him. The other side has got the U.S. and its money. The pressure is on people who are trying to promote human rights inside the country.

"I feel Ahmadinejad and President Bush are like two blades of a scissor."

Ackerman took a different view.

"The question is: Why are they going to jail?" he said. "What kind of people are sending these people to jail? What's going on here is wrong. It's despicable."

Finkel reported from Washington.