Ahmad BatebiIran 
Ahmad Batebi, a student activist, was reported by Amnesty International to have "disappeared" following a meeting with a United Nations (UN) official on 8 November 2003. He was on leave from prison at the time, and was serving a ten-year prison sentence. He was jailed for taking part in demonstrations in Tehran in 1999. According to his father, repeated death threats had been made against Ahmad Batebi and members of his family. Batebi was arrested in July 1999. With many other students, he took part in protests against the closure of the newspaper Salam. It has been suggested that a widely-published photograph of Ahmad Batebi holding up another student’s bloodied shirt during the demonstration prejudiced his case. Under duress, he signed a false confession and at a secret trial, he was sentenced to death on “national security” charges. His sentence was commuted to 10 years on appeal. In February 2003, a letter appeared, said to have been written by Ahmad Batebi and other prisoners. The authors express their support for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and their opposition to “despotism and totalitarianism.” In 1998, a number of Iranian writers, who had been questioned about their attempt to found a writers’ association, also "disappeared, and four of them were later found dead. Intelligence officials were convicted of participation in at least two of the murders
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