Mohammad Shabani's suicide note is analyzed by a handwriting expert and Fariba Nawa gets the results. She follows the ripple effects of the new information, and Mohammad's best friend tries to make sense of what it means.

Lethal Dissent is a 9-part series about the price and peril that Iranian dissidents face for speaking out against their government, and the secret operatives who seek to silence them. It all begins when two friends flee Iran to escape the regime’s crackdown on dissent. But when they arrive in Turkey, one of them dies under unusual circumstances. Fariba Nawa, a reporter in Istanbul, works to unravel the mystery of what happened. In the process, she enters Turkey’s underworld of kidnappers-for-hire and shady government officials, and takes the listener inside an Iranian operation to snatch exiles who stand up to the regime. The stakes: the right to say what you truly believe, and potentially, your life.With support from the Pulitzer Center and Zamaneh Media.Nine episodes, one story from The World and On Spec Podcast. 