A State of Fear

by Dr Reza Ghaffari

  It didn’t take Mojtabah long to realise that Khomeini’s agenda was very different from that of the masses. Within the first year of the Islamic regime, he began to look for alternatives. It wouldn’t be found among the minarets of Qom, but through the left organisations represented among the students he worked alongside in Tehran University.

  Here, he was drawn towards the revolutionary left, and soon became the organiser of one of the bookstalls there. He came to believe that the Islamic seizure of power was a counter-revolution and advocated its overthrow. Where he had previously distributed Khomeini’s works among the pilgrims at Qom and the students in Tehran’s universities, Mojtaba now circulated Marx’s writings around the campuses in the capital. Where he had previously handed out religious material decrying the despotic regime of the Shah, he now distributed pamphlets calling for the overthrow of the Ayatollahs’ state apparatus.

  Mojtabah’s enthusiastic apostasy was bound to bring him to the attention of the Hezbollah. When the universities were closed under the pretext of carrying forward the ‘Islamic cultural revolution’, many students and professors were weeded out. Mojtabah was one among thousands thrown out of the lecture halls and into the prisons. Like so many of us, he was tortured and interrogated in Evin’s block 209, and then rushed through a mock trial. His judge was none other than his former mentor, the senior judge Ayatollah Gilani, now the head of the Islamic judicial system.

  Gilani combined this day job with a little early evening moonlighting. He hosted a popular show on TV: indeed, he was the regime’s equivalent of Oprah. He discussed at length – literally – how far it was permissible for the penis to penetrate the vagina before it became sinful during Ramadan. So many inches were still consistent with fasting. A good, all-sheets-to-the-wind fuck would have been deemed gluttonous and profane. Popular viewing as this was, it caused a real problem for families in getting the kids away from the tube.

  Had one been able to dine out in prison, Mojtabah would have dined out for years on his account of the exchange between him and his old tutor he gave to trusted comrades in the Golden Fortress.

  ‘What is your name, my son?’ asked Gilani, who knew the answer very well.

  ‘Mojtabah, Haji Aghah’.

  ‘Why have you turned your back on Islam, God and Imam Khomeini?’

  ‘Ah, through bad associates and bad advice at the University’, sighed Mojtabah ruefully.

  ‘Do you know that what you have done is blasphemy – a crime which merits immediate beheading?’

  ‘No, I haven’t blasphemed. I was only politically active.’

  ‘Why did you lose interest in being active on behalf of God and Islam? What made you become active in politics against God?’

  God obviously didn’t dabble in politics. Be honest, when did you last see a deity with a placard?

  ‘It was a mistake,’ said Mojtabah, playing the misguided political naïf – if his inquisitors had detected any sign that Mojtabah was convinced in these beliefs they would have taken pleasure in hanging a renegade former mullah that very night.

  ‘God will be watching you in prison!’ Gilani shouted across the court room. ‘Any ungodly behaviour will bring you instant death!’

  This ‘trial’ took about three minutes. A short trial and a long sentence – ten years, and all the time his neck would be under the axe’s blade. The news of Mojtabah’s arrest brought shock and outrage in his home village and the first person to disown him was his father – less out of devotion to God than a desire to maintain his status among his customers in the village. In contrast, his mother, although amazed and distraught not only by his activities but also his plight, was more understanding. For many years, she would be the only person from the village to visit him in different prisons.

  With the death sentence hovering over his head, Mojtabah was understandably more cautious and restrained than many other prisoners. He would be careful to whom he spoke, and about what.

  There’s a lot more that could be said about Mojtabah. Like many others, he deserves his own book. This cannot be it, and it is unlikely to be written, at least not yet. Mojtabah survived his prison term with honour and, like all those that did, has to watch his back while the Islamic regime survives. So I shall say no more.

  CHAPTER 12

  THE VIP LOUNGE

  Nineteen eighty-five was a year of change for prisoners at the Golden Fortress. Many political prisoners were sent to other jails throughout the country. Iran was experiencing a crimewave, brought about by deteriorating social conditions and the Fortress was earmarked to hold the non-political prisoners.

  International protest and pressure from prisoners’ families over conditions in the Golden Fortress made it necessary for the regime to shuffle the pack. This eventually led to the replacement of Haji Davoud and his cronies with a new broom, Haji Meysam, who had been the governor of the large prison in the south at Shiraz. He was associated with Khomeini’s heir apparent at the time, Ayatollah Montazeri. This grouping was calling for a regime of Islamic indoctrination within the prisons. Things, hopefully, would be easier, at least for a while.

  At the changing of the guard, while the jailer’s key ring passed from Haji Davoud to Haji Meysam, there was something of a hiatus within the prisons. Formal religious education in classrooms replaced the constant radio barrage, and we were given the right to organise our own classes, and have textbooks sent in to us – on approved subjects, of course.

  I was transferred to another block in the Golden Fortress, Mujaradi block 4 in section 3, which allowed greater freedom of movement but, paradoxically, I was less inclined to use it. The reason for this was the prisoners we now had to associate with. These were the supporters of the Shah, and included some luminaries of the old regime: four-star generals, heads of Savak, government ministers and the Shah’s ambassador to France. Members of the royal court were held here, even the Shah’s dancing master.

  A second group, closely associated with the first, were leading members of the Islamic regime’s army who had taken part in a failed coup d’état. Most of them were army officers from the Shah’s time who had stayed on after the Khomeini takeover. Some had distinguished themselves in the suppression of the Kurdish uprising of 1980-8. They boasted loudly of having ‘put down the communists’. These two groups made up about 60 per cent of the block.

  Those of us in the forefront of the fight against both the Shah and Khomeini – the socialists, communists and Mojahedin – comprised about 15 per cent. There were members of Rahe Kargar, the Fedayeen Minority and Mojahedin and the Tudeh. Then there were supporters of the National Front, a liberal tendency among a thin layer of intellectuals, merchants and employers. One, Amir Entezam, was a former deputy prime minister and main spokesman of the Islamic government after the overthrow of the Shah. Other ousted politicians included supporters of the Islamic regime’s first president, Bani-Sadr, who hadn’t been quite quick enough in getting out of the country when their leader fell out of favour with Khomeini after the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.

  Lastly, there was a mixed bag of South Tehran hoodlums and other big city gangsters, mullahs with qualms about the regime, or who had been caught with their fingers in the till. Then there were another couple of mullahs, caught with their fingers in other people’s underwear.

  Mixing up more than a hundred incompatibles in this block was essentially an exercise in mischief-making by Haji Davoud. There was no common ground across these main political divides. The left would co-operate with the Mojahedin, but never the royalists, mullahs or gangsters, and vice versa. Unsurprisingly, left wing political prisoners were unwilling even to sort out a toilet rota with those who had tortured them under the Shah in this same prison or slaughtered their way through Kurdistan.

  The royalists for their part did not want to associate with non-believers, and some would report on us to Haji Davoud. They were ‘ready made’ Tavabs in this respect. The royalists blamed the left for the downfall of the Shah and conseque
ntly the rise of Khomeini. Citing the Tudeh and Fedayeen Majority’s defence of the Islamic regime, they would tell us, ‘You communists gave full support to Khomeini. You are responsible for this!’

  We left wing prisoners lived communally, each supporting the other. The new conditions meant we could talk more freely together, associate in the yard – even play football and volleyball with tightly packed rags. Later, the prison officials even condescended to sell us a plastic ball.

  Money brought by our families every 20 days was pooled, and used to provide food and the like from the prison shop, bought for us with the money by a guard. Special needs were catered for out of the money, too. We would of course extend this to comrades who received no visits and no money. If a comrade fell ill, others would always take care of him. Decisions were arrived at democratically by the prisoners’ weekly cell meeting – although we were careful to make sure that no one outside knew about this, as it would have brought trouble down on our heads. Eating, too, was communal. The food supplied by the prison, along with the supplementary food we had bought, was spread out on a plastic sheet on the floor, around which we would sit. Each prisoner could then help himself. This had been the practice of left and Mojahedin prisoners, even under the Shah.

  Our approach was in stark contrast to that of the royalists and the others. What each of them could get, he made damned sure he kept for himself. Five cells on the opposite side of the corridor to ours were occupied by royalists and army would-have-been coup leaders. All were long-term prisoners: from ten years to life. The cell whose bars faced ours housed eight of them: generals and one air force colonel; a famous flying ace. Most had grown beards, and were doing their level best to act the part of the obedient moslem. They probably had the most over-used prayer mats in the prison. They had actually been worn to threads! Any time a prison official visited, they complained of our presence in their block. They protested that they had served the Islamic regime before, were penitent for their misdeeds, and wanted to do so again. The presence of communists in the block tarred them by association: we lowered the tone of the neighbourhood.

  Each of them had access to much more money than the whole group of left prisoners put together. Any one of them would spend more on one meal than the 14 people in our cell would spend all week. We would watch from our cell, as the eight men opposite got out eight separate plastic trays and dug in to eight separate meals, not one with a thought of sharing with another. Each ate with his back to the others and to the cell door, so that no one could see what delicacies he had procured.

  Most of the royalists and army grandees were filthy rich. Many would pay the equivalent of thousands of pounds into the private coffers of Haji Davoud to make one short call to their families in Europe or America. Even if they couldn’t buy themselves out of prison, they wanted to make sure that the weight of their wallets would lighten the weight of their work. They would hire the hoodlums or other impoverished non-political prisoners to do their dirty jobs, like a valet. They would even get them to do their own personal washing. Left wing prisoners would not – and to the best of my knowledge never did – lower themselves to this. We were no one’s servants. Even in prison, the royalists maintained their class distinctions.

  The royalists not only hated the left, they also deeply distrusted each other. Haji Davoud was therefore able to use some of them not only to inform against the left, but to sneak on each other. Occasionally this would get out of hand, as we saw in one farce played out before us in the four-star generals’ cell opposite.

  A member of this royalist cell was brought before Haji Davoud after a report that one of his ‘comrades’ had made against him. The prisoner – a general – explained that the informant had a grudge against him, and that the report Haji had received was rooted in personal animosity and not in fact. To prove his sincerity and love for the Islamic regime and Khomeini, the general proceeded to grass on brother officers in his cell. They had bad-mouthed the regime, cursed Khomeini and so on. Haji Davoud called in each of these prisoners, one by one, to put the accusations to them. Each one responded exactly the same way – denying the charges and squealing on his fellows, until each one of the eight was implicated several times over.

  Haji Davoud loved this. A scrap dealer from the wrong side of the tracks had made fools of the leading lights of the Shah’s officer corps. As a finale to the farce he called them all into his office, and demanded that each one repeat their charges in front of the others. They must all have gone bright purple with embarrassment and fury! Haji then berated them: how could he believe anything anyone had told him? It was obvious that there was not one among them who had an ounce of personal integrity or honesty! After the scrap dealer had finished carpeting the generals, he sent them back to their cell with their tails between their legs.

  We found out about this tribute to the discipline and integrity of the Shah’s generals as they arrived back in the block. They were pushing and shoving each other, tearing at each others throats and shouting, ‘How could you say that my prayers were not sincere?’, ‘You liar! I’ve never criticised Imam Khomeini!’, ‘I did not denounce the Islamic revolution!’. We were treated to their recriminations for a whole week after. So much for the top brass’ esprit de corps.

  There were one or two establishment figures who stood out from the pack and could be respected. One was a four-star general named Jahanbani. His brother had held the same rank and had been shot by the regime. Jahanbani was sentenced to life. Although he had no thought of resisting the regime, he refused to engage in the backstabbing and sycophancy. Another was Amir Entezam, the first deputy prime minister of the Islamic regime. Not only was he honest in his dealings with others, but he was vocal in his criticisms of the prison conditions to officials and would argue, chapter and verse, why these went against Islamic law. He is still in prison.

  The regime had trouble maintaining its discipline over some inmates. One colourful character was a mullah of about 30 who was jailed for his subsidiary profession – rent boy. He plied his trade inside as well as out, among the hoodlums and one or two willing royalists. This was another way that class structures reproduced themselves in the prison. Sex of this sort was possible for the royalists since they bought all their foodstuffs from the prison shop. We were dosed up to the eyeballs on the standard, bromide-enriched prison diet. No one else even thought of sex any more. It was also felt that such associations could implicate political prisoners in a situation that carried a heavy penalty. There were enough dangers without adding to them. The regime constantly moved the gay mullah around in an attempt to find somewhere ‘safe, and preserve the ‘morality’ of the jail.

  Another mullah we shared the block with, more mindful of Islamic propriety, was Ahmad Moftizadeh, a Kurdish leader of a large Sunni sect. He had collaborated with the regime’s repression of the Kurds during the crushing of the Sanandaj uprising in 1980. On finding his way to the inner sanctum of the regime barred, he had attempted to secure an independent base by voicing criticisms of it. This had earned him a jail sentence. With him were four followers who acted as personal servants. Everywhere he was to be found, they were in attendance. They would wash his hands and feet, obey his every command. He would lead them in prayer, the others kneeling behind him. Because of his status as religious leader, Moftizadeh got preferential treatment. When his wife visited, he did not have to speak through a screen for a painfully brief five minutes, as we did. Every so often, he and his wife would be escorted to a house on the other side of the prison, where they would be allowed to spend the weekend, alone and undisturbed.

  This oil and water mix of prisoners resulted in a lot of mutual distrust and hostility – hostility that often teetered on the brink of open and wide-scale confrontation. The royalists looked for any pretext to get us expelled from the block. We knew they were conspiring against us; some of us had been put into solitary as a result. I remember one occasion when a full-scale riot was about to erupt in the block. All the prisoners were expec
ting it and had prepared. Rocks, iron bars, handmade knives and anything else that could conceivably be used as a weapon were concealed about the cells. This was not something that we looked forward to. Violence would result in heavy punishment by the prison authorities, and anyway the left was heavily outnumbered in the block. Fortunately the situation was defused through negotiations between representatives of the different factions.

  In our cell there were three Rahe Kargar members, two from the Fedayeen Minority, two Tudeh sympathisers, two Mojahedin, and five from smaller left organisations. I got on well with a member of Rahe Kargar called Heydar Zaghi, the son of a poor tea vendor in Tehran’s bazaar. He had been the head of the organisation in the industrial city of Kazvin, where he had been working to establish a solid foothold in the factories. While driving from Tehran to Kazvin his car was pulled over by the Islamic guards. A bundle of the Rahe Kargar newspaper was found in the boot, but he claimed that he was just transporting them. Heydar was sentenced to three years at his trial.

  At the end of his sentence, he had been asked if he was prepared to denounce Rahe Kargar in a televised show trial. He had refused and was sent back to his cell. Release dates don’t mean a lot in Iran. The following year, new information came to light which indicated the prominent role he had played. He was taken to 209 for a new round of interrogation, re-tried and given a further ten-year sentence.

  Heydar was an energetic debater in the cell. Although he lifted the morale of the cell with his love of discussion and conversation, he also had a deeply melancholy aspect – or maybe just pragmatic. ‘They’ll never let me out of here alive’, he would occasionally ruminate, head in hands. Unfortunately, he was right. As his sentence drew to a close in 1988, he was executed.