"Let My Colleagues Go"

In an open letter to Iran's leader just posted at the NYT site , Maziar Bahari, the Newsweek journalist imprisoned in Iran last year, asks him to release his former journalist colleagues still in jail there. Excerpt:

You have also been called the “No. 1 enemy of journalists in the world” because your government has arrested dozens of them since the presidential elections in June 2009. More than 60 are still in your prisons.

I was unfortunate enough to know firsthand how your agents treat journalists. I was kept in your jail for 118 days simply for being a reporter. For much of that time I was tortured.

But I do not hold any grudges. I am writing out of concern for my colleagues and the future of our country.

“Our future society will be a free society and all the elements of oppression, cruelty, and force will be destroyed.” It is not I who am saying this. It was your predecessor, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said those words to a reporter from Der Spiegel on Nov. 7, 1978.