For people around the globe, the images of club-wielding men on motorcycles beating demonstrators on the streets of Tehran was just another case of brutality in a far-off land.
But as he watched the violence of recent weeks unfold on television and YouTube, Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, an exiled Iranian, recognized some of the attackers.
They were once good friends.
His life, encapsulating the betrayals and disappointments that followed Iran's tumultuous revolution 30 years ago, as well as the hopes and fears of Iranians now living abroad, had come full circle.
Once a lonely young man in exile, a rejuvenated Ebrahimi is now using his experience as an insider within Iran's hard-line militias to "out" members of the group.
On his well-regarded Persian-language blog, he has listed the names and phone numbers of about a dozen militia members whom he has spotted in photos and video of the demonstrations over his homeland's disputed presidential election.
One of them rang him up in a tizzy. "This is unethical," his onetime friend told him.
Ebrahimi was flabbergasted. "You're killing people," he said. "Isn't that more unethical?"
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Why was the 11-year-old spending so much time at the mosque, Ebrahimi's family wondered. What was he doing after school, hanging out with the sons of those detested "Hezbollahis," Islamic radicals who had dominated the country after the 1979 revolution?
His father, an air force pilot, was no true believer. After returning from lengthy stints at the front of the Iran-Iraq war, he would immediately shed his fatigues, shave off his beard and curse those who headed the war effort as incompetent fanatics.
But young Ebrahimi was enchanted by the country's new spirit, lured by the confident young men who signed up to fight.
"The boys kept saying, 'Let's go to the mosque,' " he recalled. "There were always displays of guns and grenades there. I liked it."
In 1987, the 12-year-old and a friend lied about their ages, evaded their parents and signed up to fight on the front lines during the war's penultimate year.
"They gave us a little money and a train ticket and told us to report for duty," said Ebrahimi, who provided photographs showing him as a fresh-faced youngster in uniform.
One day his father came to the base. He approached his son, slapped him hard on the face, then walked away without saying a word.
