Former Iran Captive Denounces Prison Cruelty—in America

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http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/iran-hiker-sarah-shourd-solitary-confinement


Sarah Shourd and Shane Bauer at a news conference in Tehran in May 2010. Ahmad Alabisaz/ZUMA

Sarah Shourd is one of three Americans who were imprisoned in Iran in July 2009, after they were arrested and charged with espionage while hiking on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan. Her two male companions, Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, were jailed together, but Shourd was isolated in a 10-by-14-foot cell in Iran's notorious Evin Prison, and held there for almost 14 months.

In September 2010, Shourd was released on humanitarian grounds, according to Iranian authorities, due to ill health. (Bauer and Fattal were released a year later.) Since returning home, Shourd has spoken out against the widespread use of solitary confinement in the United States, and has appeared in support of the inmates at Pelican Bay and elsewhere in the California prison system who recently engaged in a hunger strike to protest conditions in long-term solitary. Her op-ed on the subject appeared in the New York Times last November. I spoke with Shourd about her time in the hole, and why she has taken a stand on behalf of American prisoners.

Mother Jones: Are there parallels between solitary in Iran and the United States?

Sarah Shourd: There are parallels about solitary confinement everywhere. The really scary thing is that the US government and many governments were very critical of Iran for holding me in solitary for 13-1/2 months, but when I got out I was shocked to find that the US had more people in solitary confinement than any other [democratic] country—and in this country it is used routinely as an administrative practice, not as a very last resort. Which is how it should be used.