MIDDLE EAST: One is a family-run dictatorship, the other a theocratic state with a semblance of democracy. But Syria and the Islamic Republic of Iran are allies in their opposition to US and Israeli domination of the region, and both have deplorable human rights records.
Anwar al-Bouni and Rahmin Jahanbegloo left a deep impression on me when I interviewed them - Bouni last January in Damascus; Jahanbegloo 11 years ago in Tehran. Learning that someone you know is in prison is always a shock.
I met Bouni in the home of a former member of the Syrian parliament who had just been released from prison. With his fragile build, pale face, black hair and moustache, the human rights lawyer resembles Charlie Chaplin. He spoke energetically of his desire for the rule of law in Syria, and an end to the 43-year-old state of emergency.
Bouni was excited about the EU grant he had received to establish a centre for training human rights workers. It opened for a few hours in February. According to Haytham Manna, a Syrian exile and spokesman for an Arab human rights group in Paris, the Mokhabarat (intelligence service) told Bouni to shut down the centre or they would confiscate the house he had rented.
Bouni reckoned his immediate relatives, most of whom are communists, have spent an aggregate of 60 years in Syrian prisons. Wasn't his criticism of President Bashar al-Assad's regime likely to land him in jail? "I don't care," he said. "Nothing is achieved without a price."
Anwar al-Bouni was taken from his home in Damascus on May 17th. He has since been charged with working to overthrow the regime, threatening public order and incitement to sectarian hatred, Manna said.
Bouni's real offence was joining 273 other Syrian and Lebanese writers, intellectuals and artists in signing the "Beirut-Damascus Declaration" published by An-Nahar newspaper in Beirut on May 11th. Twelve Syrian opposition figures have since been arrested, all but one of whom signed the document.
The declaration called on Syria to "respect and consolidate the sovereignty and independence" of both countries by defining borders and establishing diplomatic relations. UN Security Council resolution 1680, passed on May 17th, said the same thing.
There has been no news of Bouni's condition since he started a hunger strike on May 20th.
Rahmin Jahanbegloo disappeared from Mehrabad airport on April 27th. Jahanbegloo is a world-class professor of political philosophy with a doctorate from the Sorbonne, where he wrote his thesis on Mahatma Gandhi's theory of non-violence.
"He wasn't an activist," one of Jahanbegloo's friends said over the telephone from Tehran. "He is only known among intellectuals and philosophy students. It's very frightening - you don't expect someone like that to be arrested."
When I met Jahanbegloo in Tehran in 1995, he compared his country to eastern Europe before the disintegration of the Soviet Union, or China at the time of Tiananmen Square. But he saw cause for optimism. The authorities had allowed him to launch an intellectual review, Goftegou ("Dialogue") - something which would not have happened in the 1980s.
Jahanbegloo emigrated to Canada, where he was granted dual citizenship and taught at the University of Toronto from 1997 until 2001. He also taught at Harvard before choosing to return to Tehran four years ago, to lead the department of contemporary thought at the Cultural Research Bureau. He married an Iranian, with whom he has a baby daughter.
When I inquired after Jahanbegloo during a recent visit, he was completing a six-month teaching stint in India. He was travelling to Brussels for a conference when he disappeared on April 27th. His wife contacted conference organisers and learned he had never arrived.
Several days later, intelligence agents brought Jahanbegloo home just long enough to seize his computer and documents. Jahanbegloo has been charged with no crime, but intelligence minister Mohsen Ejei said he was arrested "because of his contact with foreigners". Jomhouri Eslami newspaper, which is close to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called him "an element of the United States who was part of the plot to overthrow the regime under the guise of intellectual work by peaceful means." An Iranian official who did not wish to be quoted cautioned me against writing about Jahanbegloo "before the intelligence services complete their investigation" - in case he turned out to be a spy.
Could the kind, brilliant professor I met really be a CIA agent, I asked Reza Moini, the Iran desk officer at Reporters Without Borders.
"Whenever intellectuals, journalists or opposition figures are arrested, they're always accused of threatening state security and espionage," Moini said. Jahanbegloo's real "crime", Moini suspects, was making no secret of his secular ideas.