Iran International
A political prisoner’s letter from jail has sparked fresh outrage over Iran’s long-running use of televised confessions to discredit detainees and justify stiff sentences.
The latest controversy began when Amir-Hossein Mousavi, a social media activist known online as James Bi-din, described in a prison letter how a televised admission he had spied for Israel was coerced under duress and manipulated by Iran’s state TV.
“Almost every sentence I uttered in the interview was the result of the interrogator’s prompting and coercion,” Mousavi wrote. “Even those statements were later broadcast by the Islamic Republic’s state television with much distortion.”
The program aired earlier this week during prime time on the 8:30 PM special news segment, a slot regularly used for publicizing forced confessions.
Mousavi was arrested on December 18, 2024, at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport while traveling to Kish Island. Nearly a year later, he remains behind bars and was recently told his trial would begin in about a month.
The goal of the highly edited documentary-style program, he alleges, was to make the public believe that Iranian intelligence agents had captured a “Mossad spy” after the twelve-day war and to "shift blame for their failure to identify real spies onto someone who has been languishing in prison for nearly a year without due process.”
Fabricated timeline
Mousavi revealed that the interview was recorded months before the twelve-day war with Israel, but edited to make it appear as if he had provided intelligence to Mossad during the conflict.
The recording, he added, took place after nearly 150 days in solitary confinement, during which he said he endured severe physical and psychological torture, including threats that his wife would be arrested.
In the broadcast, it was alleged that Mousavi had provided “information on sensitive military facilities” to a user named “Avi,” who supposedly forwarded it to Mossad.
Mousavi rejects the accusation, saying he never shared any information, not even general knowledge, and welcomed the publication of any evidence to the contrary.
He said he first became acquainted with Avi after another user, Elaheh, described him as an ordinary Israeli citizen critical of his government.
Mousavi described Elaheh as one of hundreds of ordinary friends he had on Twitter, saying their chats were casual and unrelated to any government, and that a record of the chat introducing Avi exists.
A systemic practice
From politicians to rappers women who defied compulsory hijab rules, foreign nationals, dual citizens, and environmental activists, the Islamic Republic has long used televised confessions as a propaganda tool.
Detainees are often shown “admitting” to crimes after torture sessions, prolonged isolation, and threats against family members. These confessions serve to discredit the victims, suppress dissent and legitimize state repression.
A 2020 report by rights groups Justice for Iran and the International Federation for Human Rights said Iran’s state television broadcast the coerced confessions of at least 355 people over the past decade to suppress dissent and intimidate activists.
Outrage on social media
Activists and users on X widely condemned the broadcast. “Confessions obtained under pressure, threat, or torture have no credibility,” wrote one, urging others not to repost the footage: “Let us not be complicit by sharing these coerced and unlawful confessions.”
Another post read: “A forced confession is not the hearing of truth—it is the witnessing of a broken soul.”
Others echoed the same sentiment: “Ordinary citizens who have no access to classified documents cannot be spies; the spies are among your own high-ranking officials.”
Human-rights advocate Emadeddin Baghi, a former political prisoner who has done extensive research on forced televised confessions, concluded in a post: “Even for someone whose guilt has been proven, broadcasting televised confessions is impermissible. (Even) if a person is guilty, the law itself should suffice.”
“Lawful permanent residence was always considered secure — almost unassailable,” Nia said. “To see people who have lived and worked here for years suddenly detained or deported with little to no process is alarming. ICE appears to be acting unlawfully in many of these cases, without proper judicial oversight."
US media reported this week that two Iranian green card holders were arrested in recent months by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in cases apparently involving minor crimes.
The administration of US President Donald Trump has stepped up efforts to detain and deport some green card holders citing past crimes or political activity at odds with its values. Most of the cases are being contested in courts.
Under US immigration law, green-card holders can only be deported in limited circumstances, such as when they commit certain crimes, falsify immigration documents, or remain outside the country for extended periods.
Nia said what is happening now goes far exceeds those bounds.
“Deporting Iranians who fled repression — or sending them to third countries like Sudan, Rwanda or Somalia — violates both international law and America’s own treaty obligations,” she said.
“This normalization of lawlessness should concern every American.”
In Los Angeles, NBC News reported that Sharareh Moghaddam, a small-business owner who had already passed her citizenship exam, was detained after attending what she thought was a routine immigration appointment. Her husband, Hooshang Aghdassi, said she had entered the country legally and had no record of wrongdoing.
“She had green card and passed exam for citizenship and was waiting for the ceremony,” Aghdassi told NBC. “She is not a bank robber or thief or criminal.”
ICE rejected that account, telling NBC Los Angeles in a written statement that reports claiming Moghaddam had no criminal history were “completely FALSE.” The agency described her as “an Iranian native and citizen with a documented criminal history dating back to 2015,” citing two theft convictions between 2015 and 2019, and concluded that she was “subject to removal under US immigration law.”
Newseek reported last month Reza Zavvar, a 52-year-old green card holder in Maryland who has lived in the United States for four decades, was detained for seventy-seven days by ICE in a case related to a marijuana charge in the nineties.
Zavvar, who first came to the country as a child, described his treatment as “unnecessary, inhumane, corrupt.”
“Saying that you can stay here as long as you don’t get in trouble, that you stay clean and just stay here, work, pay taxes — and that’s what I was doing,” Zavvar told the news outlet.
Iranians sent back from US without consent, lawyer says
More recently, 120 Iranians — including political dissidents and Christian converts — were deported to Tehran.
This comes after The New York Times reported that the operation followed “months of negotiations” between Washington and Iranian officials, and that the deportees were flown aboard US-chartered aircraft that left from a military airport in Louisiana, stopped in Puerto Rico to collect more passengers, and continued to Doha before their transfer to Iran.
Immigration attorney Ali Herischi, of Herischi & Associates in Maryland, told Iran International that two of his clients were among those deported against their will. “Their belongings — including their files, evidence and cell phones — have been handed to Iranian authorities. That’s very dangerous,” Herischi said.
He added that some detainees were given a stark choice: “ICE would say, ‘either you consent to deportation to Iran, or we send you to Somalia or Sudan.’ It was, ‘pick your poison.’ In the case of my clients, they didn’t even get that. They just said, ‘you’re done, let’s go.’”
Another Iranian national, Erfan Qaneifard, a political activist and writer, has been held for six months at the Prairieland Detention Center in Texas.
His lawyer, Masoud Peyma, told Iran International that ICE contacted Iran’s Interests Section in Washington seeking travel papers to deport him. “The risk is real. If he is sent back, his life will be in danger,” Peyma said. “There is no reason for him to remain in detention after six months.”
For Nia, these cases expose a broader collapse of process and accountability within the immigration system.
“It’s the normalization of a lack of process — the idea that even a green card, or eventually citizenship, could become conditional on political speech,” she said. “That’s authoritarianism creeping into the system.”
Civil-rights groups echoed those concerns, warning that forced returns could endanger vulnerable Iranians.
“Asylum seekers now face the possibility of being returned to a country where they have a well-founded fear of persecution,” the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, Pars Equality Center, and the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans said in a joint statement.
“This runs against core American values as a nation based on hope, freedom, and liberty that has long welcomed people facing oppression who, in turn, have contributed mightily to America," the statement read.
ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to Iran International requests for comment on these cases.
