‘Now, what are you going to do? Do you talk, or should I ask our brothers to make you talk? We have forced central committee members to talk. Do you want to be a hero? You’re a fool. No hero will emerge from this cell alive. Do you know where we’ll take your corpse? To a cursed hole where dogs will tear you apart.’
‘Brother,’ I said, sobbing, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini that you have made a mistake, I know nothing about these names and addresses.’
The chief interrogator and two others took the straps off and sat me up on the bed, still blindfolded, so that I was facing the door. I heard more people entering the room and four more boots appeared on the ground, along with someone wearing plastic prison slippers. I assumed he was another prisoner, but had no idea who he was. The chief interrogator spoke again. ‘Farhad, take off your blindfold and tell us who this man sitting on the bed is.’
With some hesitation, the prisoner said, ‘He is Karveh, a lecturer at the University of Tehran.’ Karveh was the secret underground name I was known by for 20 years and more while in the Rahe Kargar movement. He gave a list of names of people supposedly working under me and recited a statement that had obviously been dictated by prison officials: ‘My wife and I have both been captured. Our organisation has been attacked at the very top. We have given the brothers all the information that we have. You should do the same, otherwise you and your family will be destroyed.’
Farhad. I knew that name well. And that voice was familiar, too… it was that of a cadre in Rahe Kargar. It took me a second to place him as he sounded different, broken and desolate. It was a tone that I had never heard before, although I now understood the reason for it. I was aware that anyone I said I knew would share my fate. A name would mean a death. I would be helping to destroy the struggle of which I was a part; the struggle for workers’ rights. Workers had no right of association, unions or bargaining power and it’s the same now. Rahe Kargar was helping to organise secret cells inside factories to fight for these rights. There was only one way to respond.
‘Why are you lying?’ I said, furiously. ‘Who are these people you are talking about? Why are you accusing me of having contact with them? Have you ever introduced any of them to me? I have never met any of these people.’
‘You are lying,’ the interrogator snapped. A fist connected squarely with my head. I heard Farhad being taken away. The torture was about to begin again. From under the blindfold, I glimpsed a deep pile of dried scraps of flesh and pools of blood. The macabre remains of those who had been tortured before me, who had died or were imprisoned in this hellhole. I knew that some of these ‘untouchables’ would have been no more than children: only 12 years old, boys and girls. Some would have been as old as 80. Yet the flesh was not so much revolting as inspiring: a testimony to those who, in the name of justice, had refused to break.
‘I must make a decision,’ I thought. ‘Should I give up all the values of democracy, freedom and justice that I have held for so long? Or should my blood join that of the others who resisted and remained firm in their commitment?’ I knew then that I would not jeopardise the lives or activities of my comrades. I would not be helping myself even if I did talk. Anyone brought in because of my confession would only be tortured until they produced more evidence against me. But would my silence protect me? Perhaps. Only if Farhad had not disclosed anything else about me and no other comrades from our organisation – especially those from the Rahe Kargar newspaper – were arrested.
The interrogators worked for Savama, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. This was the secret police and they were experienced. Some had been employed in the time of the Shah and when he was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979 they discovered their skills were still much in demand. The one the others called Haji Rahman shouted at me: ‘Motherfucker, we caught you red-handed in one big net. We’ll hang you all.’
‘Give this motherfucker to me,’ screamed another. ‘I will kill him and send him to hell right now.’
‘Hey, let’s hear from your own fucking mouth which counter-revolutionary group you belong to,’ said one more.
‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini, there is a mistake here. I have never been a member of any organisation.’
Someone punched me again. Haji Rahman shouted, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini’s glorious spirit that if any of the information is withheld and if any of them get away, I will kill you with my own hands.’
‘We don’t just want details of your underground activities, we need passwords too.’
‘I swear I have no information or passwords to give!’
‘We won’t let you out of here alive. We have no time for heroes,’ Haji Rahman said. ‘Brothers, teach him how to talk.’
The torture began. With each blow I screamed clear and loud. I blacked out and awoke to find myself in an infirmary, tubes attached to my body. The doctor – a prisoner from the Blaoch region – came to my bedside when he saw that my eyes were open. ‘God has had mercy upon you. You have had a stroke due to the trauma to your head. You’ve been unconscious for three days, very close to death. The right side of your body has been affected.’
My first thought was that they could not push me further. I was relieved. They didn’t want to kill me… not yet, anyway. I was in the infirmary for days. I began to feel a little better and my wounds began to heal but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the interrogators returned. They still wanted information. Sure enough, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the one they called Haji Samad, the chief interrogator, returned me to the cells. ‘The original information we wanted from you is useless. All the meetings will have taken place by now, and they’ll know that we have you,’ he said coldly. He threatened to take me to Lanat-Abad, the infamous mass graves for communist victims, where he would finish me ‘with one shot’.
‘Haji,’ I cried, ‘I beg you to kill me. What you’ve done to me is unbearable. I’m blind in my right eye, my right arm and foot have lost their power to move, my feet are covered in scabs and open sores. My bladder is bleeding and my urine is full of blood. Living like this is worthless. Kill me then I’ll feel relief from the pain and wounds you’ve inflicted on me. At least I know I’ll be remembered by our people for resisting.’
‘You think the people support you?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re nothing. All of our people are Hezbollah. They despise you. If we handed you to them they’d tear you apart.’ He removed the blindfold and handed me a pen and stack of paper with a list of questions. ‘Answer all these questions and anything else you know. I’ll be back.’
It was not until around midnight, nine hours later, that an interrogator entered and asked me if I had finished writing. ‘No,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to add, ‘My medicine is still in the infirmary. I have to take it every three hours. Now nine have passed. Would you please take me to the infirmary?’
He reluctantly agreed and, after reapplying the blindfold, led me away.
Every two or three days, Haji Samad or another of the interrogators would demand information. One day, while I was sitting on that now familiar bed frame, a Hezbollahi came over and whispered in my ear. He knew my name and talked about where I used to work. ‘I know you weren’t a bad guy,’ he said, ‘but I warn you, if you don’t co-operate, you won’t get out of here alive.’
I never saw that man again. Or if I did, I was not aware of it. But then I never actually saw the faces of my interrogators, as my time with them was spent blindfolded and turned against the cold prison walls. Not long after that strange encounter the Hezbollahis tried a new approach. I was taken to the torture rooms as usual, then Haji Samad entered with two others. ‘The information you’ve given us is rubbish,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell us what we need to know, or not?’
‘Haji,’ I replied, ‘you have all the information I’ve got.’
‘Hang him from the meat hook.’ he ordered, ‘and keep him there until he’s more talkative.’
The two me
n bound my wrists together behind my back with one elbow behind my head pointing up and the other pointing downwards. They picked me up and hung my wrists over a meat hook fastened to the ceiling. My entire body weight was now supported by my shoulder joints at an agonising angle and my toes barely scraped the floor. Ribs, spine and shoulder joints were instantly put under enormous stress. This is a form of crucifixion and it severely restricts breathing. I could only prevent asphyxiation by making my legs rigid and standing on tiptoes. But I couldn’t take this forced position for long and my legs soon started shaking with exhaustion. I was forced to take the stress back on my chest and shoulders. I alternated from one agonising position to the other. They took me off the hook for short periods, during which I was fed and taken to the toilet.
This torture is known as ghapani after the system used to weigh lamb carcasses. It was used as far back as the Shah’s reign and many of the unfortunates who are hung up in this way would lose all sensitivity around their shoulders. They are left with great pain in their neck and back which persists for years. My own time on the ghapani only ended because I could no longer be kept conscious long enough to be tortured. On the third day the stress on my body caused my left collar bone to snap. I screamed in agony, again and again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. At last I couldn’t get any more air into my lungs and, thankfully, passed out.
The Hezbollahis had at last seen there was little point in probing my immediate political activities and moved onto broader issues. ‘We understand you teach at the university.’
‘That is correct.’
‘There are lots of pretty girls there. Did you have sex with them?’
‘My job is to educate our youth. It’s to enrich our country through its people. It pays peanuts for what it is but it’s a job I’m honoured to do. When I enter a lecture room, it’s like entering a mosque. The youth before me are like a congregation to whom I have responsibility, every bit as strong as to my own children. I have a part in moulding our people’s future for the better in what I can teach. Do you think I’d abuse that? If you need a straighter answer than that for your records: no, I don’t sleep with them.’
It was important to give an unambiguously negative answer to this line of questioning as unapproved sexual relations in Iran can be punishable by death. They changed tack. Had I smoked dope? Tried opium? Drank alcohol? All carried heavy sentences and every prisoner was asked these questions. Extensive background enquiries would be made in which the authorities would look at intelligence computer files dating back to the time of the Shah.
If anything, my interrogators were less interested in political questions than they were in morality. They were obsessed with the sexual habits of all us prisoners. One 75-year-old woman that I spoke to was pressed to confess the misdemeanours of her youth to the eager listeners. They got a licentious kick from forcing our peccadilloes from us.
The various lines of questioning seemed to go on without end. How long had I been here? It was difficult to tell, but I reckoned about three months. Three months… and already I was a wreck. During the rare moments of peace, I thought of my wife and children, wondered what had happened to them and tried to recall the events leading up to my arrest.
The Hezbollahi first raided my home some two months before I was eventually taken away. My family were sitting on the floor, enjoying the evening meal and watching one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches on television (an attack on ‘leftist stooges of American imperialism’, I think). Aunty went to see who it was. Before the lock was properly off the latch, the door was flung open, trapping her against the wall. There was a clatter of boots. One man began shouting orders.
I was taken to my study by two armed guards, the older of the two clearly the leader. He started firing questions at me, making notes of my answers. The questions were textbook secret police: ‘What’s your contact with the left, counter-revolutionary organisations?’; ‘Are you a member or sympathiser?’; ‘Do you know anyone who is?’; ‘Have you ever read their papers?’ I was also asked broader questions about what I thought about the nature of the Islamic regime and the war with Iraq.
While I played safe with non-committal answers, the younger man began rifling through my bookshelves and the notes I prepared for the following day’s lectures while others ransacked the rest of the house. As the search proceeded their disappointment became evident. Someone had obviously led them to believe that this was a safe house, brimming with wanted activists from clandestine organisations and everything from left-wing pamphlets to missile launchers. They were not in luck.
This was early 1981, a period marked by regular clashes in the streets that frequently led to the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators. Raids on private houses were commonplace and I had taken the precaution of getting rid of anything that could be deemed counter-revolutionary. On the wall of my study there had once been posters supporting workers’ rights and the Kurdish national struggle. There was now a banner supporting the taking of American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran. I had made a small bonfire on the roof several days earlier and ashes were all that remained of my piles of left-wing pamphlets, papers and books. It had not been easy to burn 15 years of agitation, propaganda and debate.
The police finally gave up at 11pm. According to their warrant they were looking for material linking me to specific organisations; a printing machine, and evidence that the flat was used as a safe house. Instead, they found a family sitting down to tea, watching Khomeini on television. The oldest Hezbollahi went outside to radio in his report and wait for instructions before the police finally left with the house a mess – but still standing. After my arrest the whole house – and some of the homes of my relatives – would be stripped bare. This was common. Confiscating ‘evidence’ – which included everything from money and jewellery to TVs, stereos and cars – and selling it on was highly profitable.
The oldest raider turned to me as they left and said, ‘We’re sorry about this, brother. Our information is normally accurate. After all, it was one of your relatives we heard it from.’ It was certainly an inconvenience but it was also a warning that my name was on the Hezbollahi’s list. I told comrades from my organisation not to come to the house. I was torn: should I flee the country or await arrest? I decided to sit tight and see what would happen. Back then I thought that going to prison for my political convictions at this time was the right thing to do. Sitting in my cell, looking back, it seemed like a very long time ago. A different world.
I still had no idea which prison I was in, but I guessed it was the country’s main interrogation centre, known as Evin. I was mistaken. I found out about four months later that I had been held in Komiteh Moshterak (Centre for the Committee of Anti-Subversive Activities). It had been established by the Shah’s Savak – which was later replaced by the Savama – as a special complex for the interrogation of political dissidents. The majority of its inmates were members of the Fedayeen and Mojahedin, the two guerrilla organisations fighting against the Shah. Under the new regime Komiteh Moshterak and other prisons continued to exact a terrible revenge on political prisoners. Reports filtered out that made the persecution of political prisoners under the Shah look tame by comparison.
Komiteh Moshterak had been built by the last Shah’s father, Reza Shah and it once held hundreds of fighters for freedom, democracy and socialism. Although prisoners were allowed deliveries of home-cooked food, conditions were generally far from humane. A revolutionary poet named Farokhi was put to death by having air injected into a vein. His executioner was Pezeshk Ahmadi, a veterinary appointed the position of prison doctor. The Shah’s father also imprisoned those responsible for establishing the Group of 53, the first communist party of Iran.
Just as they did with almost everything else in Iran, Khomeini’s regime Islamicised the names of the prisons. Mine became known as The Centre for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It was supposed to hold a hundred maximum security prisoners at a time but now packed in around 2,500.
They occupied every conceivable space available: lavatories, yards, balconies of upper floors and hallways. There were queues everywhere. Prisoners lined the corridors. On each side of every passageway they laid head to foot, blindfolded and facing the wall. I lay like this for a period of four months, only moving to be taken for torture and interrogation or to the bathroom. On these breaks we would be taken, perhaps ten at a time, and given one or two minutes despite there being only three or four cubicles. This happened three times a day, once after each meal. If we had time and could get to one of the sinks, we could use this short visit for washing dishes, hands, faces, and even our prison uniform.
As long as a prisoner was under intense interrogation, he or she would be kept inside the torture room and witness others being tortured or outside waiting their turn or in the yard adjoining the torture block. Those who survived with terrible wounds would be taken to the cramped, crowded hallways or balconies. If they were lucky, they might end up on a more spacious corridor if other prisoners were taken away to other jails – or taken away to be shot. There was absolutely no information – written or otherwise – from the outside world and communication between prisoners was risky. Once I was approached by a man who stood behind me and whispered in my ear.
‘Would you like to read the Koran?’
‘Brother, I can’t read Arabic.’
‘I can help you to read it,’ he said.
‘I’m bleeding internally. I can’t keep my mind focused.’
‘Those who have not repented,’ he hissed, ‘will be wiped out from the face of this earth!’ With this sweet thought he departed, thankfully never to be encountered again.
A State of Fear Page 2
