Laleh Hassanpour, a poet under torture to 'confess'

For a long time, every morning when I opened my Yahoo mail, there came the photo of this beautiful woman along with her latest piece of poetry. Laleh always wore a cap and smiled at you sideways. I never thought she lived in Iran. Her poetry was passionate and full of life. She always spoke of nature, her feelings of life and love. She always asked you to be her friend and communicate with her. I enjoyed going through her latest poems and immerse in youthful thoughts.

Laleh was not living abraod, away from danger. She was a women's rights activist living under the constant threat from a regime that knows no mecry, no compassionate, no boundaries in capturing and detaining its citizens and torturing indiscriminately. She lived in Iran under constant threat.

Laleh was detained for a crime she had not committed. She has been tortured, kept in inhumame conditions and forced to 'cofess' to the crimes she has not committed. Laleh is a poet. Poets creat beauty, bring out hidden secrets of life for us to read and enjoy. Poets don't commit crimes. Poets in Iran are condemned because they speak of love and life and the beauties of life. Their language is far from the language of brutality and torture and prison.

In her last visit, Laleh told her mother that she is under pressure to appear on TV to 'confess' and she has refused. The interrogator who was present at the meeting cut off the phone and dragged her out of the cabin. Laleh, that beautiful woman who is full of love of life and poetry is imprisoned, tortured and deprived to speak out her thoughts just because she is Laleh; a poet, a woman, a brave Iranian prisoner of conscious in the notorious Iranian jail.