Together with friends across the world, I’m protesting Shane and Josh’s detention in Iran’s notorious jail for political prisoners, Evin.

Shane was captured in a cross-border raid by Iranian forces while in Kurdistan in Northern Iraq in 2009, along with another of my friends Sarah Shourd (since released) and their mate Josh Fattal.

Two years ago I was sitting in a cafe near Regents Park in London when I spotted a short paragraph in the Sunday Times about “three US hikers” captured crossing the Iraqi border into Iran.

My intial response was probably similar to that of most people who’ve spent time living and working in the region: they must be spies.

It was only when I got a call from Mazen – my friend and Arabic teacher in Damascus – that I realised what had happened.

I knew very well that Shane and Sarah had gone to Kurdistan – I’d wished them goodbye from Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus where they lived. I’d also turned down an invite to go with them, the BBC job I was working on meant I couldn’t leave Syria for long enough. But it still took a while for it to sink in that the very same mates I’d been playing backgammon and smoking shisha with were now part of a growing international news story.

My initial panic was relatively short lived. Pretty soon I relaxed, knowing that once the Iranian authorities knew who they were, they’d be out soon.

Besides, how could Iran justify holding Shane, a widely published independent journalist, openly critical of US policy in the Middle East? Not only had he just published the cover story in the Nation, on US-trained death squads, but he’d also just been to visit his close friend Tristan, who was recovering after being shot in the head by the IDF during a Palestinian-led protest against the Apartheid wall.

Shane could hardly have been more vocal about his opposition to the Israeli occupation, and – along with Sarah – had been an organiser of anti-war protests against the invasion of Iraq.

In short, I was confident that Iran would soon realise this wasn’t the kind of American it was hoping to catch.

Two years on, I now realise I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Unlike the UK navy sailors who were captured by Iranian forces and released after 13 days following pressure from the UK government, Shane and Josh are still in prison after 700 days.

Shane is a phenomenal journalist – fiercely independent, and refusing to swallow any country’s propaganda (he was an unembedded reporter in Iraq). He is a passionate defender of Human Rights. Anyone who shares these values and who cares about the course of justice should be outraged at the continued imprisonment of Shane and Josh.

That means that we must campaign for their release. By that ‘we’ I mean the ordinary people who don’t accept the binary world where the US is good and Iran is bad (or vice versa). The world is full of greys, good people and bad, who carry all colours of passports.

Shane and Sarah (and I’m sure Josh, though I’ve never had the fortune to meet him) are some of the good ones. They have dedicated a large part of their lives to fighting injustice wherever it pops its ugly head, whether in the US or elsewhere.

That’s why we have to support Shane and Josh. Because if we don’t do it, nobody will. And with them in prison, the world is being starved of two incredible activists who work tirelessly to make this little rock we inhabit a better place. We’re all poorer without them.

So happy 29th Shane – I hope you find some way in your cell to celebrate it.

PS I’m saving the birthday hug until you get out.

More info:

Sarah talking to Amnesty after her release
Sarah on BBC HardTalk
Free Our Friends (a website a few of us put together)
Free The Hikers (official campaign home)

Big respect for Bob Brown – leader of the Australian Green Party – who took a stand for borderless democracy in their senate a couple of weeks ago.

In a senate debate in support of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, he said:

“We go to war over supporting democracy in countries elsewhere around the world. The opposition certainly supported the invasion of Iraq on the basis of extending democracy to that country. When it comes to a principle of democracy being given to the near seven billion people on the planet, it seems that there is no willingness to support that ethic of democracy whatever.”

No surprises that the two main parties in Australia refuse to even debate the topic. That’s the same situation in the US, UK, France … and pretty much every other country that stands to lose in a rebalance of the global system.

Is it only the Greens who these days can think beyond national interest?

Email bob at senator.bob.brown@aph.gov.au or tweet him @senatorbobbrown

Thanks to TWIGG for spotting this one.

It is almost a year since Iran detained my friends Shane Bauer and Sarah Shourd (and their friend Josh).

It demonstrates just how empty the Iranian government’s claim to defend Palestinian rights really is.

Shane and Sarah – who were living in Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp at the time – have done more for Palestinians and against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that pretty much every Arab and Iranian I know.

What is depressing is that the Iranians must know this, and yet still detain them.

Part of the blame must also lie with the official “Free The Hikers” campaign, that for whatever reasons has chosen not to highlight Sarah and Shane’s politics. Despite doing fantastic work in drumming up domestic US support, it has taken too long to start trickling in information about their work.

Portraying them as hikers lost in the wrong part of the Middle East does not help anyone understand who they are. When I first saw the story in The Times last year, I instantly assumed they were spies. Who wouldn’t?

However, that same afternoon I got a call from a friend in Syria who said it was Shane and Sarah. After my initial panic I thought that as soon as it became clear to the public who these guys were they would be released.

But nobody was talking about their work. I’m still not sure why, but their families wanted to take their politics out of the equation. Unfortunately when it comes to the Middle East that doesn’t work. Politics is paramount and people fall on either side of the line: pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. Sure, there are more nuanced ways of saying it, but that’s the fundamental distinction. If you’re American and don’t have the evidence to prove it, the assumption is you’re of the latter category. Fair enough, I say, Americans (and Brits) have done enough to shaft the Middle East many times over to warrant immediate suspicion.

The difference was that in this case, there was – and still is – the evidence to demonstrate very clearly that these guys are not US/Israeli spies and have spent their lives campaigning for justice in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan and many other places besides.

It has been a frustrating year for many of Sarah and Shane’s friends (well, at least the ones that I know) who have felt that they haven’t been able to talk about their politics for fear of jeopardising the official campaign. However, following a visit by the mothers of Sarah, Shane and Josh to Iran in May, Shane asked explicitly that we focus on their work for justice in the Middle East.

So that’s what we’re doing now. Along with a bunch of their friends, we’ve released a website with quotes and links to their work. Please visit it and pass it on.

Iran needs to realise that if it really cares about the rights of Palestinians it should release Shane, Sarah and Josh.

www.FreeOurFriends.eu

Today’s truck bomb in Baghdad has killed well over a hundred people.

In our media, it becomes just another bomb attack in Iraq – a conflict that bores us these days. Well, to jog your memory, here’s a list of major bomb attacks in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein:

• Aug. 19, 2003 – A truck bomb wrecks U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, killing 22 people, including U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello.
• Aug. 29, 2003 – A car bomb kills at least 83 people, including top Shi’ite Muslim leader Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim, at the Imam Ali mosque in Najaf.
• Feb. 1, 2004 – 117 people are killed when two suicide bombers blow themselves up in Arbil at the offices of the two main Kurdish factions in northern Iraq.
• Feb. 10, 2004 – Suicide car bomb rips through a police station in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, killing 53.
• Feb. 11, 2004 – Suicide car bomb explodes at an Iraqi army recruitment centre in Baghdad, killing 47.
• March 2, 2004 – 171 people are killed in twin attacks in Baghdad and Kerbala.
• Dec. 19, 2004 – A suicide car bomb blast in Najaf, 300 metres from the Imam Ali shrine, kills 52 and wounds 140.
• Feb. 28, 2005 – A suicide car bomb attack in Hilla, south of Baghdad, kills 125 people and wounds 130. It was postwar Iraq’s worst single blast.
• July 16, 2005 – A suicide bomber in a fuel truck near a Shi’ite mosque in the town of Mussayib, near Kerbala, kills 98.
• Sept. 14, 2005 – A suicide bomber kills 114 people and wounds 156 in a Shi’ite district of Baghdad.
• Sept. 29, 2005 – 98 people are killed in three coordinated car bomb attacks in the mixed Shi’ite and Sunni town of Balad.
• Nov. 18, 2005 – At least 74 people are killed and 150 wounded when suicide bombers blow themselves up inside two Shi’ite mosques in Khanaqin.
• Jan. 5, 2006 – Two suicide bombers kill over 120 people and wound more than 200 in the cities of Kerbala and Ramadi. Fifty-three were killed and 148 wounded in Kerbala and 70 killed and 65 wounded in Ramadi.
• July 1, 2006 – A car bomb attack at a crowded market in Sadr city, a Shi’ite district of eastern Baghdad, kills 62 and wounds 114. The Supporters of the Sunni People, a previously unknown Iraqi Sunni Muslim group claim responsibility.
• July 18, 2006 – Fifty-nine people are killed by a suicide bomb in Kufa, near Najaf, in an attack claimed by al Qaeda.
• Aug. 10, 2006 – Thirty-five people are killed and 90 injured by bomb blasts near the Imam Ali shrine in southern city of Najaf. The Jamaat Jund al-Sahaba (Soldiers of the Prophet’s Companions) group claims responsibility.
• Nov. 23, 2006 – Six car bombs in different parts of the Sadr City neighbourhood of Baghdad kill 202 people and wound 250.
• Dec. 12, 2006 – A suicide bomber kills 70 people and wounds at least 236 in Tayran Square, in central Baghdad after luring a crowd of labourers to his vehicle with promises of work.
• Jan. 16, 2007 – A car bomb and suicide bomber strike the Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad killing at least 70 people and wounding 180.
• Jan. 22, 2007 – A double car bombing at a second-hand goods market in Bab al-Sharji, a busy commercial area in central Baghdad, kills 88 people and wounds 160.
• Feb. 1, 2007 – Two suicide bombers blow themselves up at a crowded market in Shi’ite town of Hilla, killing 61 people and wounding 150.
• Feb. 3, 2007 – Truck bomb kills 105 people and wounds 225 in a busy market in central Baghdad.