Sharjah24 – AFP: Two Iranian ex-prisoners have opened a successful "jail restaurant" to help raise funds to free convicts languishing behind bars for unpaid debts.
A storefront picture of their "Cell 16" diner in eastern Tehran shows a frustrated prisoner holding a chicken leg in one hand and trying with the other to bend the bars of his cell to escape.
The idea of the restaurant was hatched in prison.
"I met my partner while we were in police custody," Benyamin Nakhat, 31, told AFP. "I was working at the iron market in Tehran but I went bankrupt. I found myself penniless."
His business partner, Arman Alizadeh, a 30-year-old exporter, was also drowning in debt.
Iranian law is harsh on writing cheques that bounce, and on failure to pay agreed dowries or bank loans: it's jail time until the money is repaid.
More than 11,000 Iranians are behind bars for failing to pay their debts, according to prison officials. That is almost five percent of Iran's total prison population.
Two years after their release, the jail time friends opened Cell 16, with its separate dining tables behind bars.
"Decorating the place was easy, we just reproduced the place where we'd been held," Nakhat said, smiling. "We wanted to show that prison isn't necessarily a place filled with bad guys.
"Inmates are sometimes people who haven't committed crimes but have had misfortune. It can happen to anyone."
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