I was not even eighteen years old when I was forced to flee my own country. Against all the hopes of those of us who participated in the Islamic revolution, the revolution enacted a system of political violence that created an unprecedented flood of political refugees and led to the murder of thousands by a regime that claimed to liberate them from tyranny. In the 1980s, thousands of Iranians who fought with you against the Shah were executed, convicted by revolutionary tribunals, without legal representation, with no official charge. Among those killed were two members of my own family. One is buried in a mass grave. In 1988, in the space of a few weeks, thousands of political prisoners were given a summary hearing, slain and thrown into anonymous graves on the orders of Imam Khomeini.

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