Prisoner

by Jason Rezaian

  “With all due respect, how do I know that? And who is us?” I asked, subtly trying to remind him that, even if he wasn’t, he was supposed to act as though he was impartial.

  “Because I am the judge, and no one comes here without my permission.” He had denied several of the lawyers my family chose to represent me, citing the same rationale.

  “I would like to request that we delay this hearing until my family, a representative of the Washington Post, and one from the Swiss embassy are in attendance.”

  “Denied.” He was starting to get testy.

  “I would like to request that this be an open trial. If I am guilty of any crimes the people of Iran have the right to know about it. I would like a public trial.”

  “I know why you want a public trial. You want to fill this courtroom with your spies,” he said, accusing me like a little kid might.

  “My spies?” I was genuinely shocked he’d taken that line. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do. We’ve interrogated thirty of them who work for the domestic press and report directly to you. These are their interrogation files,” Salavati said, pointing to stacks of blue and pink folders in front of him.

  I laughed indignantly, feeling something like strength swelling inside me for the first time in months, and gave him an eye-rolling look that said, Come on.

  “If you have a single witness, bring them here to testify against me. Bring one. Name one.”

  “Enough. We’re getting started. You’ve wasted enough of my time already.”

  I can hold my own in a back-and-forth with this clown, I thought, but will I be able to handle a death sentence if he pins one on me?

  Salavati read the four charges against me. I pled not guilty to each of them.

  I could hear shifting in the seats behind me. Apparently it wasn’t going according to plan.

  By all accounts I had ever read about other dual nationals and journalists who had been tried, their trials were incredibly short. Often just a few minutes. No evidence. No witnesses. Just a guilty verdict and a heavy sentence.

  From the beginning this was a different kind of show, and one that appeared to be being produced for local television.

  A man in his fifties sat down next to me and introduced himself by saying that I could rest assured that he was “totally impartial.”

  “Are you a member of the court?” I asked him.

  “No, I’m just a translator,” he replied.

  “Too bad.”

  I had requested an official translator, although by then, ten months into living a life solely in Farsi, my language skills were good enough that I was unlikely to miss anything if I didn’t have one. But I wanted that extra level of accountability on someone else’s shoulders and the buffer between the judge and me.

  “So how bad is my situation?”

  “It is not good, but I am hopeful for you. You must be strong,” he advised.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong and I have not been allowed to consult with a lawyer,” I responded. “You can see how bad that looks, right?”

  “Yes. You should have been more careful. Journalism is not a good job.”

  I was beginning to like him less and less.

  The procedure was the same as it had been in all the pseudo-judicial proceedings I’d been through during those first ten months. Salavati would ask a question, usually a very pointed one like “As an agent of the United States government working illegally in the guise of an accredited journalist, how do you explain your interactions with known antiestablishment figures and CIA officials such as . . . ,” and then he would name well-known journalists or think-tank scholars.

  I was to answer in writing, in English, and the official translator would translate the text from English to Farsi and then read his translation back to the judge as my testimony. Not exactly foolproof.

  By then I knew that my sole objective was to not concede the slightest hint of any wrongdoing. They zig, you zag, I reminded myself. That was my role in this, and tackling it became easier than I ever expected, knowing that more people around the world were standing up in my support every day.

  I had also answered all of these questions so many times in interrogations in the previous ten months, and thought them through in the quiet loneliness that followed. In every instance I just went back to my original, honest answer, and bolstered it with the further explanations I came up with during so many sleepless nights.

  In the vacuum of the prison’s interrogation routine, ferried back and forth from solitary, the deck is stacked against you in a way that makes the game not even worth playing. But here, with people watching, a lawyer representing me—or at least trying to—a prosecutor who’d spent a year building a wobbly case against me, and cameras, I knew I could shine.

  I had no other choice.

  With every question I looked for the opportunity to unequivocally state my innocence while offering reasons why what I was being accused of was not a crime.

  “I am a journalist, and all of my activities have been conducted as a journalist, and all were legal,” was how Iran’s domestic media quoted me from the supposedly secret trial later that day.

  The charges against me as read by Salavati were “espionage through collecting classified information and providing it to hostile governments” and “spreading propaganda against the regime,” but it was plain to everyone that what I was actually being accused of was gathering public information and sharing it with the world through the Washington Post. We call that journalism.

  Salavati asked a pointed question about sensitive economic data that I had supposedly transmitted, referring to reports I had written about the highly cited crash of the Iranian currency as a result of Iran’s being cut off from the global financial system. This was an established fact that was openly discussed by everyone in the country and all those watching it.

  I wrote my answer, which my official translator was then tasked with officially translating.

  “I only ever had access to and shared publicly available information,” I wrote.

  And then he wrote, and read his version for the judge.

  “I only shared government information.”

  I had to laugh. What else was I going to do? I leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “My brother, the words for ‘public’ and ‘government’ are not the same in Farsi or English,” I told him.

  “Yes, yes. You are right. My apologies.”

  “Please explain to the judge that you made a mistake,” I requested.

  “Your Honor, I have made a mistake.” He was obviously ashamed. “I used the word ‘government’ when I should have used the word ‘public.’”

  “Since when does the defendant give orders to a member of the court? You will do as I say, not him!” Salavati reprimanded him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I leaned over again and told him, “prison in Iran isn’t that bad. Much better than Guantánamo.”

  He was obviously nervous. “I’m very sorry.”

  “I know you are. Don’t worry about it too much.” And then, trying to invoke all that I’d learned from a preadolescence watching L.A. Law, I said, “Your Honor, I’d like the record to reflect that the official court translator is not qualified to do this job.”

  The translator looked frustrated.

  “Please translate,” I requested, and he did.

  That session ended as it started. I approached the bench and asked Salavati to release me on bail. When that was denied I asked for more meetings with my wife. Denied. More telephone calls. He said he’d consider it. I stuck out my hand and he shook it again, without looking me in the eyes.

  The prosecutor approached me and said, “Why are you making this harder on yourself? Just plead guilty. We are not trying to torture you. This isn’t Guantánamo.”

  I started to formulate a sarcastic reply and thought better of it.

  My guards came to take me away. Too much fraterniz
ing for their comfort.

  As they led me away the prosecutor and Salavati walked in the other direction, together, yukking it up.

  The news of my not-guilty plea broke swiftly via the semiofficial Fars News Agency—no one in Iran even flinches saying its name even though some of them must know by now that when pronounced accurately by English speakers it is “Farce” News—which carried a report with some of the details of my supposedly secret trial.

  My media machine—my big brother on TV and the Washington Post in print—went into overdrive.

  “There is no justice in this system, not an ounce of it, and yet the fate of a good, innocent man hangs in the balance,” Marty Baron wrote. “Iran is making a statement about its values in its disgraceful treatment of our colleague, and it can only horrify the world community.”

  Ali and the legal team that the Post had hired to defend us internationally scoured my emails, which Google—with a recommendation from the Department of Justice—reluctantly let them access after months of pressuring. The strategy was to dissect those emails and, based on the details that the Iranian propaganda machine and judiciary were giving about the charges against me, to anticipate the Iranian government’s next moves, which they did with incredible accuracy.

  As my brother explained it in an interview, “There are other specific pieces of evidence that we believe they are going to use to support the charges.”

  The first was a letter I wrote to the Obama transition team in November of 2008, a response to an open call from them for people interested in working for America. Millions of people across the country did the same. Very few received a reply. I was not among those who did.

  And another was documents associated with Yegi’s application for U.S. permanent residency status. A process open to every single foreign-born spouse of a U.S. citizen anywhere. An incredibly mundane and well-trodden procedural path—even among tens of thousands of Iranians—that had been spun into proof of our cooperation with the enemy.

  “What I can say is that those are two of the most significant ones,” Ali said. “So I think you can see what kinds of evidence they are basing their entire case on, and that’s taken three hundred ten days of my brother’s life.”

  “He’d never do anything malicious to hurt Iran, or the United States,” Ali said. “And we want to be as loud and clear to everybody in the world.”

  Mine was a secret trial with no secrets.

  May 26, 2015

  BACK IN PRISON

  After my first court session I couldn’t tell if Kazem was genuinely upset or if it was just more acting. It didn’t help that I was back in a tiny interrogation room being talked at through a one-way mirror by him and an angrier guy I never saw.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” the voice asked. “We wanted to give you a discounted sentence. We have treated you very well. For your crimes you should have been executed months ago.”

  I had overheard this line about “discounted sentences” before when passing by other detainees in the corridors, who were just as vulnerable, confused, and blindfolded as me. I knew no such thing existed. Sentences were all imaginary until an outside force intervened or the prisoner was offed.

  “What crimes?” I asked. “There’s nothing more I can do. I’ve done everything I could. I never did anything wrong and I answered all your questions.”

  Kazem entered the interrogation chamber.

  “We had a deal. What happened? You were supposed to accept your guilt in court,” Kazem asked, sounding genuinely hurt.

  “You told me to tell the truth, didn’t you?” I replied.

  “Yes, but then you changed.”

  “But if I lie in Revolutionary Court, in front of God, won’t the punishment be much heavier?”

  “You are a very professional man.” Kazem smiled. “Your lawyer is not your lawyer. She is just your real lawyer’s shadow,” he went on. They’d had six months to do any sort of background snooping that they wanted and they were all of a sudden questioning her allegiances, apparently assuming, probably based on her gender, that she would be intimidated into not actually representing me. “It doesn’t matter, she will be in here with you very soon. You scored one goal, but we have scored six.”

  I was pissed and I couldn’t keep a lid on it.

  “This is Islamic justice? Really? I’m done. Take me back to my cell.”

  The session ended. The angry guy left. It was just the two of us again and Kazem started walking me back to my cell down the outdoor path, fifty yards I knew well, the ones where we spoke frankly, or appeared to. I was confused, but so was Kazem.

  “Why did you do that?” Kazem asked. “He was trying to help you. You are making things worse for yourself.”

  I was getting sick of these bastards telling me that.

  “You bring some guy here to intimidate me and tell me that he’s trying to help me? You really think I’m an idiot, don’t you?”

  “No, J, you are very intelligent. We know that. We have been studying you and your IQ is the highest of any prisoner we have ever had.” Any short-term effect of his ego stroking had worn off many months ago, but he stuck to it as a tactic. “Do you think it would be better for you if I come to court next time?” he asked me. That I continued to maintain my innocence was obviously very troubling to him.

  “I think I would get angry and tell the judge how you’ve tortured me and I don’t want to upset you,” I told him. I was playing with him again.

  “Why do you keep defending yourself? I told you to plead guilty and it would finish, and you would go home,” he told me as we approached my cell’s door. “This is a very real trial.”

  “So now what?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Will I still leave?”

  “Yes. Someday.” There was so much gambling going on, but I couldn’t really read what was happening around me.

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Plead guilty. It will be better for you.” Do the opposite of whatever they tell you to do, a voice in my head had been telling me for months.

  “How many more sessions will there be?” I was just trying to get any information I could.

  “If you accept your guilt the next one will be the last one, but if not, perhaps twenty more sessions. Maybe more.” Okay, now it’s obvious he has no idea what he’s talking about. “It is your right to have a trial, but we thought you’d like to go home sooner.”

  “So if I plead guilty our deal is still on?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he said, and we were now back at my cell door. The guard opened it and Kazem and I paused at the door.

  “Pray tonight. God likes you very much. He will help.”

  “Okay,” I told him, and as he walked away I called, “Come back and see me soon.”

  “Inshallah,” he said over his shoulder. “If I could I would come to see you every day.”

  Back in the cell I tried to make sense of what had just happened.

  “Vaziat?” was Mirsani’s one-word question whenever I returned to the cell. It meant “situation” or “circumstance.”

  “Not bad. Not good. Not clear,” was my typical answer.

  By then I’d realized that the worst they could realistically do to me was put me back in solitary. I feared that to my core, although I knew I had survived it once. But the odds of that were shrinking by the day with all the attention my case was getting.

  My treatment had changed so many different times, but now it was clearer than ever that they intended to extract items of value in return for me, and they really couldn’t do anything other than continue to hold me and make sure I didn’t die.

  But that didn’t stop intermittent harassments, like the ones that followed all of my court sessions. They honestly thought I was going to plead guilty. They were surprised I hadn’t given in yet.

  June 8, 2015

  SECOND TRIAL DATE

  Two weeks passed before my second courtroom appearance was announced. I
desperately hoped it would mean the end of the trial. Not only was the self-imposed deadline to complete the nuclear deal, set for July, fast approaching, so was the start of Ramadan.

  Having lived and worked in Iran for years and visited other Muslim countries during Islam’s holiest month, I knew the court process would slow down considerably and probably come to a complete halt during Ramadan; it doesn’t take a genius to realize that when entire societies, in fact whole regions, avoid eating or drinking anything, including water, from sunup to sundown for an entire month, very little will get done during that time. Especially when the ritual cleansing that supposedly comes from this period of deprivation happens to fall in the middle of summer, as it did in 2015. I had been arrested at the height of the previous Ramadan. I couldn’t believe they had already stolen a year of my life.

  Ahead of that second trial date I requested and was granted—incredibly, I thought—the opportunity to meet with my lawyer, so I was transported to court half an hour earlier than usual and led into Salavati’s office.

  When I walked in the judge, my lawyer, Leila, and the deputy prosecutor were there.

  “We heard you requested a meeting with your lawyer. What was so important that we had to come early today?” Salavati asked.

  Amir Ghotbi, the deputy prosecutor who was representing the state against me, sat forward to hear what I wanted to say. I had no doubt that his involvement in my case was the highlight of his professional career, perhaps his whole life. I also knew that the piece of shit had made personal overtures to my wife, asking her at one point why she would marry a spy instead of a nice, educated Iranian (like him).

  He even suggested that Yegi should divorce me and start fresh. In the same meeting he’d told Yegi’s father not to worry, that I would be released and become a major celebrity, that being arrested was the best thing that ever happened to me. He was a major-league asshole.

  I asked, “May I have a few minutes alone with my lawyer?”

  “What would you need to discuss with her that you can’t share with us?” Salavati said.

  “Are you serious?” I responded. “You’re the judge and he’s the guy that’s trying to lock me up for life.”