Political Prisoners

Weaponised Narratives

A couple of weeks ago, I put on a show I’d heard nothing about.
No trailer. No summary. Just a quiet night, a random choice.

The series followed an American girl named Amanda who had moved to Italy for a university exchange. She was living the same kind of ordinary, messy, happy life that most young people live abroad with new friends, small apartments, shared dinners and cheap wine.

All of that came to a crashing halt with the senseless murder of her British housemate, Meredith.

On the day that Meredith’s body was found, Amanda had come home after spending the night with her new boyfriend. She showered, and noticed what looked like blood in the bathroom. 

The front door was open. One of the housemate’s windows was smashed.
Meredith’s bedroom door was locked.

From the moment that Meredith's body was found, everything about Amanda’s life became evidence.

The Italian police, especially the prosecutor, seemed determined to make Amanda guilty. They had a story, and they were going to fill it in.

Amanda, thinking she was helping, kept cooperating. She spoke freely and agreed to meet with police.
But she didn’t have a lawyer. She didn’t have a translator.
Her calls were recorded without her knowing.

Every word she said became a weapon against her.

Soon, both she and her boyfriend were charged with murder.

As this was happening, the media built its own Amanda. A wild, dangerous “party girl” who brought strange men home and caused her friend’s death.

Even something as small as going out to buy underwear, after the police had sealed off her apartment, became headline news. The tabloids called it proof of “sexual deviancy.”

While the world tore Amanda apart, the man who actually killed Meredith had already been quietly tried and sentenced to sixteen years.
Amanda and her boyfriend had been sentenced to twenty-six.

Amanda spent four years in an Italian prison before her case finally reached the Supreme Court, which dismissed the charges.
Her family had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers.
Her trauma is permanent.
And still, many people believe she’s guilty — because the story they were told was more convincing than the truth.

Watching her story, I couldn’t stop thinking about Iran.
About all the people who are taken from their homes, blindfolded, tortured, and forced to confess on camera to crimes they didn’t commit.

Their voices are silenced before they ever reach a courtroom.
Their stories are written by someone else — a prosecutor, a regime, a machine that needs them to be villains.

The Islamic Republic’s propaganda is not sloppy. It’s rehearsed, professional, cinematic.
It takes someone’s pain and repackages it into guilt.
It turns ordinary people — students, artists, journalists — into “enemies of God.”

And it works.

Because once you believe someone deserves their punishment, you stop caring what happens next.

In 2025 alone, the regime has executed more than a thousand people — about four every single day.
None of them got a fair trial.
None of their families will ever see justice.

We say the regime is not reformable because this brutality isn’t an accident — it’s the system.
From the very beginning, violence has been its method of control.
Courts don’t serve justice; they serve power.
Sentences aren’t for safety; they’re for obedience.

There can never be justice where guilt is a political decision.

Amanda was lucky — privileged enough to tell her story.
To publish books, to rebuild.

People like Hamzeh Dervish will never get that chance.

He was lured to Turkey in 2014 with the promise of work.
His passport was taken. He was forced into a militant group he didn’t belong to.
When he escaped and sought safety at an Iranian embassy, they handed him back to the authorities.

He’s still in prison.
Some will read the state’s version of his story and believe it because they've not been given another perspective.

Stories decide what we believe.
They tell us who is innocent, who is dangerous, who is worth saving.
Most of the time, we don’t even realise how much power we’ve given them.

I was introduced to Amanda’s story from her perspective, through her own voice — calm, reflective, human.
And I believed her.
But I also asked myself:
Would I have believed her if I’d first seen the headlines?
If I’d only seen the images of her smiling in court?
If she’d never been given a chance to speak?

Can we ever really know the truth if we only hear one side?
If the story is written by those in power, edited for our comfort, and packaged as “fact”?

How many people do we condemn just because their story was told in a way that made it easy to stop feeling?

Media has extraordinary power.
It can humanise, or it can destroy.
And our responsibility — as people who scroll, watch, and share — is to stay awake while consuming it. We need to ask ourselves, "who is sharing this information and why? Who does this perspective benefit?" 

Media literacy isn’t about being clever.
It’s about survival.
It’s about seeing through the story before it swallows the truth.

At Didaar, we believe stories can reconnect what propaganda tries to divide.
Amanda’s story isn’t just about one trial in Italy.
It’s about how easily truth can be rewritten — and how vital it is that we keep listening, even when the voices tremble.