Women sentenced to death were systematically gang-raped by the prison guards beforehand, to ensure the victim had ‘no chance of getting to heaven’ – the destination of all virgins, according to Iran’s clergy. Some women were raped during and after interrogation.
Pregnancy bought no pardon or delay, either from torture or the firing squad. Shahnaz Alikhani, a sympathiser of the left, was tortured and eventually executed in the last stages of pregnancy in Evin. One 209 interrogator, Ghasem, justified this by arguing, ‘If an innocent stands between us and our enemy, then we must remove that innocent to kill our enemy. The scriptures give us this right.’
Nor were women shown any favours during the massacres; quite the reverse. Whereas men were told to embrace Islam or face the firing squad, the ‘choice’ open to women was still more horrific: take up Islam or be flogged to death. Evin, in particular, saw many women tread this slow agonising path to eternity.
Following are the results of interviews I have done with several female ex-prisoners of the regime.
Mehri was a prisoner from Kurdistan, captured in Sanandaj in September 1983. From there, she was brought to Komiteh Moshterak, along with her three-year-old daughter. Here she was held, blindfolded, sat in a corridor, facing the wall. Her daughter was placed on her lap and also made to face the wall. The corridor was lined with women in the same position, many bleeding as a result of interrogation.
She was kept there for 15 days and then transferred to Evin. As a result of beating during interrogation, Mehri bled continuously from the vagina. This did not stop for three months. Upon her arrival at Evin’s block 209, she was taken straight to a women’s ward in the infirmary. Ages ranged from girls of 13 to women in their 70s.
‘One who was in her 60s was known by all as “Mother Mary”.’ The guards had arrived at her house, pretending to be friends of her son, an activist. When her son failed to show up, they arrested Mary instead. ‘The skin on her soles had been flayed off through torture,’ recalled Mehri. ‘By the time I arrived she had already been operated on twice. But she hadn’t told the guards where her son was.
‘One pregnant woman had the flesh literally hanging off her feet as a result of the systematic lashing of her soles. Another woman, Leila, was the sister-in-law of the revolutionary poet Said Sultanpour, who had been arrested during his wedding ceremony and shot within the week. Leila’s legs were bandaged up to the knee. Her feet had been smashed to a bloody sponge, and red smudges were left on anything her feet touched.’
Later, Mehri and her child were transferred to a cell with eight other women, two of whom were Zoroastrians from the Fedayeen Minority, two members of Peykar, two from the Communist league and two from Rahe Kargar. There was also another little girl of four in the room. ‘We put the children under the sink, and the rest of us sat around the walls of the tiny cell.’ To make matters worse, the two Peykar women were Tavabs. One, Lida, was a polytechnic student, and the other, Zari, was the head of the women’s block in 209.
‘The sanitation in 209 was unspeakable,’ explained Mehri. ‘We didn’t have any sanitary towels and pleas for them got us nowhere. My baby and the other small girl weren’t given any milk. My toddler was obviously disturbed. When I was tortured, she was brought into the room. She cried and the interrogators hoped that this would be extra pressure to make me talk. One day in 209, she blindfolded her foam doll, and then beat the little doll so vigorously that it disintegrated under the blows.
‘The air in the cell was stifling, and my daughter developed a heart condition. She would hit herself and pull her hair in frustration at being unable to breathe properly. The only thing that seemed to bring her comfort was the noise of the trolley that brought us food twice a day. Years later, when people would come to our house, she would ask them to show her the soles of their feet. She wanted to see if the visitor had been through torture.
‘While I was spending time in block 209, every now and then I would be taken from my cell by the guards for interrogation. My interrogator was a mullah. Many girls I met in 209 alerted me that this mullah would take me into a quiet room and would try to sexually molest me. He put me on a chair in front of him. He was sitting in a chair opposite me and he edged slowly towards me so that his knees were pressing against mine. Then he asked me, “Do you smoke?”
‘“Yes.” I replied.
‘“We don’t give any cigarettes to women.”
‘“A cigarette does not distinguish between the sexes,” I said.
‘When they brought me back from Evin to Sanandaj prison, I came across horrifying encounters between prison guards and women prisoners.
‘At Sanandaj there was a prison guard who went by the name of Kadkhoda – God looking over your shoulder. He was from Azerbaijan, very tall and with extremely wide shoulders. He had two responsibilities in Sanandaj. The first and foremost was as the official flogger – any prisoner picked up in their cell for “mischief-making” or other acts of resistance would be tied face down on a bed and whipped. At these whipping sessions, each time he raised the whip above his head he would utter in a loud, deep voice, “God is great! Khomeini is our leader!”
‘His other responsibility was as the official representative of the Islamic court. He would escort prisoners from one prison to another, from the Komitehs to prisons all around the country. He had the use of a large Land Rover for this purpose. This was like those used by the military, with a two-seater cabin at the front and two benches at the rear which faced each other, where the prisoners would be seated, sometimes up to ten at a time. Like a good Islamic guard, he was married with two wives and six children. His face was sunken, with a thick, black beard which fell over the top half of his chest. After the court sentenced me, I was handed over to Kadkhoda’s jurisdiction.
‘“I will be taking you to your house so that you can have a meeting with your family,” he told me. “After that we will drive straight to Evin.”
‘On the journey to my house I was so appalled at the thought that someone might see me in his Land Rover that I hid my face below the level of the dashboard for the entire journey. As soon as we reached the house I saw about 50 people, all dressed in black. They came out of the house – all of them were weeping openly. I tried to ask people the reason for their sorrow. No one would answer me. Finally, my father told me that my cousin had been shot to death by the Pasdars during an attack against Kurdish guerrilla opposition forces in the mountains. So my temporary homecoming was blackened by this tragic episode.
‘My father thanked Kadkhoda for bringing me to see my family at this time. Then we climbed back into the Land Rover and headed off for Tehran. It was customary, and Kadkhoda knew it, that prisoners arriving after dark would not be admitted into prison. It was obvious that Kadkhoda had detoured to my family’s house precisely so that we would not arrive at Evin until after dark. He had pulled this stunt many times with other women prisoners. As we drove into Tehran, he stopped the car in the city outskirts and turned off the engine. He turned around to me and asked, “Are you sleepy?”
‘“No,” I said, warily.
‘“Let’s go into the back of the car and sleep together,” he suggested, ignoring my answer.
‘“No, no – I am not sleepy at all. You go ahead and have a good sleep yourself. I promise you, for the sake of my little baby girl, I will not leave the car while you sleep. If you wish, you may handcuff me to the steering wheel or the front seat if you do not trust me whilst you are asleep.”
‘Ignoring me, he pressed on. “Come on, let’s go into the back and sleep, like brother and sister.”
‘“No, I have never slept in the same bed as my brother!” I retorted.
‘He asked, “Aren’t you a communist?” I told him that that was what I’d been charged with. “Well,” he said. “I thought you reds believed in free sex. What’s the problem?”
‘“Where did you get that idea from?” I said, shrinking back into the seat. “Listen, blindfold me and cuff me to the steering whee
l so I can’t escape if you must, but there’s no way I’m getting in the back of that van with you. I’m no whore.” At last he seemed resigned to defeat in the matter, and I spent a cold night chained up.
‘The sexual adventurism of this Pasdar was well-known amongst the women prisoners of Sanandaj. Another woman, Golnaz, was brought from the Golden Fortress prison to Sanandaj in Kurdistan by Kadkhoda. Golnaz had already passed through doomsday in the Golden Fortress. During the night of her journey to Kurdistan, Kadkhoda stopped the Land Rover and removed the handcuffs from her wrists. He then suggested they go into the back of the vehicle and sleep together.
‘Golnaz shouted at him. When he saw her resistance, to save face he said, “Oh, I was only trying to see how you would react. I have no desire to consort with such an impure communist infidel. I was looking to test your resolve, your resistance.”
‘Two other women prisoners, transported from Esfahan, a province in central Iran, to Kurdistan were the subject of his attention. One of them, Nastaran, was just 18 years old and had been in prison since she was 14. Once again, during the late evening, Kadkhoda offered his services to her.
‘Later, Nastaran confided with other women prisoners in Sanandaj prison. Some months later, another woman, Parveen, aged 28 and a supporter of the Fedayeen Majority, told of Kadkhoda’s advances on her journey to prison. He started stroking her head, telling her what beautiful hair she had.
‘“You communists, of course, you have no objection to using the contraceptive pill.”
‘“What do you mean?” asked Parveen.
‘“How much do you love your husband?”
‘“That’s none of your bloody business!”
‘“Do you still think of your husband? Do you remember how he looks?”
‘“No, not very much – why are you asking these odd questions?”
Kadkhoda was not slow to reveal his real intentions once the subtle approach failed him once again: “Let’s go and sleep together in the back of the car.” Again, total rebuttal.
‘Another woman prisoner, this time a Tavab, related a similar story. Behieh, from the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, married with a young child, told me of her journey to Sanandaj. She was forced to sleep with Kadkhoda in his Land Rover.
‘My last encounter with Kadkhoda was when he hollered at me in front of interrogators, “You should have gone to the firing squad the first time you were captured.”
‘I shouted back at him, “If I was to have been shot after my first arrest, then you should have been shot six times – of course not for political offences!”’
‘The interrogators and the judge all heard my words but said nothing.
‘Kadkhoda was not a unique character amongst the Islamic prison guards. The second time that I was captured in Sanandaj and imprisoned, the interrogator was a real sadist. He took every opportunity to make sexual advances while he and I were alone in the interrogation room. Several days after my capture, he said to me, “Take these papers, fill them out and return tomorrow.”
‘They next day he returned and found the papers blank
‘“Listen, you have just arrived. If you don’t give us all the information that you have, I swear to Imam Khomeini that when you get out of this prison you will not leave alone, you will leave with a child!” The threat of rape was therefore most apparent from the outset if I did not comply with him.
‘I spoke to a fellow prisoner about this incident. Her name was Akram. I wanted help with the only way out that I could see. She reluctantly gave me a handful of Diazepam tablets that her family had brought for her. I also got some other tablets. At six o’clock the next morning, I swallowed all of these pills at once. I had decided to take my own life rather than be forced to submit to the sexual assault by this Islamic guard.
‘I slipped into a drugged sleep. When I opened my eyes I was in the city general hospital. Fortunately, some of the doctors and nurses were close friends of my family. The story of my suicide attempt raced through the city. Almost all of the prisoners got to hear of this. They heard that a girl from cell 27 had attempted suicide in order to preserve her honour in the face of the barbaric Islamic prison guards.
‘On the second day of my first encounter with the Islamic prison guards – during my first period of capture – I tried to slit my wrists. On my way back to prison from the hospital after my sleeping-pill suicide attempt, a 14-year-old girl, a Tavab, accompanied me back to my cell. She asked me why I tried to take my life. I replied that the interrogator had given me an ultimatum – he would rape me if I did not provide the information that they wanted, which I was not prepared to do.
‘As a result of this oppressive sexual threat from the guards at Sanandaj, several suicide attempts had been made by others while I was there. The overall atmosphere of repression within the prison system in Iran led to male as well as female prisoners attempting to take their lives. In one incident, a male prisoner had attempted to kill himself by cutting the main artery in his neck with a shard of glass from the bathroom mirror. However the guards arrived at that moment and managed to stop him doing so, but he was able to cut his tongue instead. Today, Kaveh lives in exile in Western Europe with only half of his tongue. This incident occurred in the same week that I overdosed.
‘In the same prison, another political prisoner, from Komoleh called Khaled – a teacher – doused himself with petrol and set fire to himself. These atrocities were not unique to Sanandaj prison. Fozi, who was imprisoned at Marivan [50km from Sanandaj] was able to tell of many similar incidents. She was captured in a small village near Marivan. She was from a well-to-do, religious family in Sanandaj. They were supporters of a well-known Sunni mullah called Moftizadeh who co-operated with the Islamic regime and the Islamic revolutionary guards at the very beginning of the uprisings in Sanandaj in 1981, in order to eliminate the resistance of the opposition forces in Kurdistan. Later on, he himself was captured and imprisoned for many years by the Islamic regime.
‘Fozi intended to join the Kurdish guerrillas in the mountains of Kurdistan to fight against the regime. She was young, attractive and strong-willed. When captured, she was taken to the local headquarters of the Islamic guards. They kept her in detention in Marivan for some time until she was sent to the Islamic court in Sanandaj.
‘When she arrived at the women’s block there, she was no longer the same young woman who had wanted to fight in the mountains alongside the guerrillas. The pain and agony of torture had broken her psychologically and she was deranged. She was suffering from gangrene and her lower legs oozed a white and yellow pus from opened wounds. The odour from this rotten, infected flesh carried a long way. She was unable to stay in any cell within the block. Neither the Tavabs nor the intransigents nor the passives would accept her in their cell because of the stench from her wounds. As a result she was left in the corridor of the block.
‘In winter, the temperature in Kurdistan would drop to between minus 10ºC-20ºC, but throughout Fozi was kept out in the corridor, where there was no heating. During this time, I took her to the bathroom to help her bathe herself about four or five times. No one else would help her. I helped her dress and wash her injured legs. I assisted her in feeding herself.
‘Each day she would sit on the cold floor, cursing at the Tavabs. She would especially swear at a woman called Zohreh Alipour, who was the chief Tavab in the women’s block at Sanandaj. She had been captured in conjunction with a man who was in the leadership of the Komoleh, in Sanandaj [his story is told in chapter five]. Fozi would sit in her corridor and holler out, “Zohreh Alipour, last night the Islamic chief judge came to your cell and slept with you! You whore!”
‘Whenever I wanted to help Fozi to the shower-room, she would refuse to go, warning me of hidden cameras in the shower cubicle, installed there by the Islamic chief judge. This was, she maintained, so that he could ogle at us in the shower. Only if I accompanied her, undressed, into the shower would she agree. The treatment that she had suffered had resulted in
this paranoia.
‘After two months they took her to the revolutionary guards’ headquarters in Sanandaj. When she returned, snow covered the ground everywhere. The harsh Kurdish winter had descended upon the land. The guard who brought her back said that she would be sent to a mental health institution in time. He ordered me to help her shower.
‘“Why me?” I asked.
‘“Fozi has requested that you should escort her to the shower.”
‘While I was washing her, I asked why she had put on so much weight. She kept repeating, over and over, that the chief judge was spying on us in the shower cubicle. She seemed extremely anxious.
‘“I’m very scared. I’ve written a letter for you. It is in the pocket of my dress. Take that letter with you, but promise me that you will not read it until I have left here.”
‘Unsure of what the letter might contain, I complied with her request. I took special care to hide the envelope from the guards. When she left the prison block, I opened the envelope and read Fozi’s letter. It read as follows:
‘The night I was captured I was taken to the Islamic guard headquarters in Marivan. Late at night in a solitary cell, suddenly the light went off. A guard came into my cell with a coal-miner’s lantern. He clamped his hand over my mouth and raped me.
‘Later on, we heard from the prison guards that on her way through to the province of Hamedan, Fozi had managed to escape from her guards and fled into the snow-covered mountains. However, she was never found, nor had she returned to her family or friends.’
Harir was captured in June 1987 when Islamic guards came to her house. Her brother was a Kurdish guerrilla in the Komoleh who had been killed by the Islamic guards in a mountain skirmish. The brother’s affiliations made the family a target.
Everyone except Harir was out. The guards tore the place apart, searching for hidden guns. They dug up the floor but still found nothing, as Harir looked on.
The guards took out their disappointment on Harir. She was blindfolded, bound and dragged screaming from the house. Neighbours informed her family what had happened upon their return – there was no official notification of arrest.
A State of Fear Page 22
