A State of Fear

by Dr Reza Ghaffari

  For over six months the family incessantly badgered the Islamic courts as to the whereabouts of their daughter. But the courts denied that she had ever been arrested. Eventually, the courts succumbed to the family’s insistent demands and acknowledged her arrest. It was claimed that this was because a gun had been found with her. They told the family that she would be hanged.

  The guards had no information about any political activity by Harir. The usual method in such cases was to pile on the pressure until the prisoner falsely incriminated herself. The guards demanded she confess her association with the opposition in Kurdistan. Every day for the first six months she was strapped down to the bed frame and interrogated for between three to five hours. The soles of her feet were beaten raw and bleeding in these sessions. Her torturers would sit next to her, wearing only their undergarments, to intimidate her sexually.

  At other times she would be taken, blindfolded, to the interrogation cell door to listen to the screams of others under torture. ‘It would have been easier to be under torture myself, than to be forced to sit and listen to it happen to others, and be able to do nothing to help.’

  She was not going to incriminate herself, as she had nothing to say. At the end of the six months, a new torturer took over, upping the stakes to force a confession. The first session was the most brutal she had experienced. At the end of this day, the interrogator told her, ‘I’ll give you 24 hours to confess, or I swear by Imam Khomeini, I’ll rape you’ – the guarantee of her violation with an oath on religious authority.

  Harir spent the night confronting her bleak options. At dawn she made her final decision. She faced rape at the hands of this monster or the scaffold – perhaps both – whatever she said. She decided to go with dignity and take her own life. But her prison cell did not contain the tools for the job. All she had was a jam jar.

  Harir waited for the corridor to go quiet, and smashed it against the wall. She now had a jagged edge. She slashed her left wrist. As the blood began to flow, she thought, ‘This isn’t quick enough’, and cut into the crook of her arm with the glass shard, slippery with her own blood. It ran quickly now, warming the cold concrete floor as it formed an expanding pool around her. She slipped into unconsciousness, grateful for the release, ‘feeling that I would never have to face the monster who had tortured me, and would rape me.’

  Dawn was a bad time for suicide. The guard was changed and the new shift went around the cells to wake the prisoners up for prayer. Harir was discovered unconscious, the cell floor running with blood. She was rushed to the infirmary. The wounds were deep and became infected as a result of the inescapable prison filth. However, she pulled through.

  Two months after her attempted suicide, with the guards still unable to force a false confession from her, she was released.

  The situation of women prisoners in the Golden Fortress while I was there was every bit as vile as experienced by Mehri and Harir. If possible, it was worse than the position we male prisoners were in.

  ‘Intransigent’ women were taken to block 8 in section 3. This was the women’s quarantine block, where they were crammed in the same way as the men. If any women presumed to complain at this treatment, Haji Davoud and his entourage would storm into the block and instruct the women to replace their blindfolds, don hijab and face the wall. Then they would be beaten.

  Haji Davoud got a particular thrill from kicking women on the backside. The force from such a kick on a slightly built teenager from this obese bear of a man would send the victim flying through the air. This caused persistent bleeding, a common complaint among women prisoners. Injuries would receive no treatment. You had to hope that they would heal by themselves – often a vain hope in insanitary conditions that frequently led to infection.

  One night in October 1983, Haji Davoud and his wrecking crew tore into block 8, beating women left and right, dragging them out of the cells to another block. They were forced to stand, blindfolded, facing the wall for 24 hours. After this, with the strength drained from their pain-racked legs, they were told to sit cross-legged. They were then divided from each other by plywood partitions which were so close they touched their shoulders. At the back of each stood a woman Tavab, watching every move. Any move meant a beating. Welcome to doomsday.

  The experience of women in doomsday was similar to that of the men. It was only a few weeks for some and a few months for others before they were screaming uncontrollably, pleading for Haji Davoud to come and listen to what they had to say. Some of them would scream, calling for him to bring pens and confession paper so that they could write everything they knew. Others were both crying and laughing insanely at the same time. This is something I don’t need to recount second-hand, as the guards would broadcast the women’s voices through the public address system and filmed those confessing to further harass those who had not yet broken.

  We were forced to sit for long hours on hard concrete floors – often from three in the morning to three in the evening – watching these innocent young girls incriminating themselves, their parents, their friends and comrades; even the very values and conditions that they had fought so hard for.

  Haji Davoud was not satisfied with just political incrimination. He would ask these innocent young girls to recount their sexual misconduct. Some of them were forced, in this way, to incriminate their parents. In reality, this was the women’s only way to satisfy Haji Davoud so he would release them from doomsday. Then, suddenly, the noise of many voices would arise from one end of the corridor: ‘God is great, Khomeini is Imam! Down with America, down with Russia, down with Israel, down with Saddam! Down with communists and down with Monafegh!’

  This was a sign of non-approval of the confession by the kapos – they wanted more detail, more information from the wretched girl prisoners. Many of them were captured while still sitting at their desks in their high schools. Once the echo of the Tavabs’ slogans had died, these poor girls were forced to make even more abhorrent and false sexual incriminations against themselves, their parents and their comrades.

  Many women who went through this experience lost the ability – or will – to speak and their powers of concentration. Some were forced to take their own lives, the only way to end the hell of doomsday which still existed in their minds. Throughout the prison the majority walked alone, ate alone, slept alone and kept to themselves. Doomsday had taught them not to communicate in any way with any other human being. It was such a harrowing and dark experience that in almost all cases this painful lesson was well learned the first time around.

  Around the first week of July in 1988 in Evin, as in Gohardasht, the television was taken away. Those newspapers approved for the prisoners were stopped, all visits to the infirmary were cancelled and any official callings of prisoners ceased. All visits by relatives, usually fortnightly, were cancelled. In effect, all the blocks were put on a ‘quarantine footing’. No one could enter, no one could leave.

  Susan, a woman prisoner in Evin at this time, related what she and the other women were subjected to. Thirty Mojahedin women prisoners were brought into her block, identified as intransigents by the regime. ‘One night during the first week of July, the prison guards started to call out their names and they were taken out in batches of five,’ she recalled.

  ‘It was said that they were to be transferred from Evin to Gohardasht. By the end of that evening, all 30 had been taken away. One of these 30 women was Maryam Golzadeh Ghafouri, the daughter of Ayatollah Golzadeh Ghafouri, a prominent religious figure who had become a Mojahedin supporter. We knew that they had been taken away for execution, as a few days before the male prisoners had told their families that a massacre was on the way, and the news had filtered back to us.

  ‘Even though we were in this atmosphere of constant executions, we were still unable to fully comprehend the extent of the massacre itself.

  ‘The first prisoners to be shot were Mojahedin supporters. The killing of the Mojahedin continued throughout the month. Once the Inquisiti
on had cleansed its bloody hands after dealing with the Mojahedin it turned on the left groups.

  ‘In these early weeks of the massacre, we had heard Ayatollah Ardebili, the head of the Islamic Judiciary, on the television. During a Friday prayer session at Tehran University, he had called for the execution of all Monafegh and communist prisoners who presented a danger to the regime. Thousands who had joined this prayer session dutifully chanted along with his macabre verses.

  ‘It was clear that the decision to unleash the massacre had been taken and endorsed at the very highest levels of government and that the pulpit was used to gain support for the elimination of the jailed opposition. As this was the word of the Imam, no one could openly oppose it and expect to live.

  ‘All of those left-wing prisoners who did not call themselves Muslim were executed. At least 200 women were executed in Evin including several women with severe disabilities as a result of the previous torture that the Islamic regime had inflicted upon them. Those who had passed through the Inquisition, those who had said they were moslems but no longer prayed, would get five doses of the lash every day – to match each of the five daily prayer sessions. This would continue until they either submitted to prayer or were slowly flogged to death. The situation was quite unclear – some accepted prayer in fear of a further session in the Inquisition resulting in their execution. Others still continued to resist.

  ‘In addition to refusing to pray, some prisoners undertook a hunger strike in protest. One girl, Sorour Davish Kohan, died from her five-times daily lashes. Some women prisoners took their own lives because they felt that this was the only way to end their suffering. Maheen Badavi, who had become well-known as a symbol of women’s resistance within the prisons – especially for surviving a prolonged period in Haji Davoud’s doomsday – took this way out, such was the degree of torture inflicted on her. A number of other women committed suicide by slashing their wrists with shards of glass. Another group tried the same method, but were saved from death by emergency treatment in the infirmary. Despite these desperate protests, the authorities persisted with the lashing sessions.

  ‘Other women tried an overdose of sleeping pills. One woman, Efat, a supporter of the Mojahedin, poisoned herself by swallowing hair-removal cream. In the Islamic religion, men and women have to clean themselves totally and even get rid of pubic hair, hence the women being given hair-removal cream. It took a full two days for her to die.

  ‘Two girls who endured the five daily lashings undertook a 23-day hunger strike. Weakened by the strike, both slipped into unconsciousness. The extent of the regime’s concern was indicated by the fact that they were brought back to consciousness by being lashed.

  ‘Most of these lashing sessions were conducted by the prison’s deputy governor a well-known torturer and murderer in Evin who had participated in all of the previous massacres there, from 1980 onwards. From being a simple guard, he had risen to the post of deputy governor at Evin; given due recognition for his consistent brutality throughout these years.’

  The mother who was flogged by her own 13 year-old Tavab daughter in Evin shows the hostility of a regime that could cynically pit women against each other. I have seen many women, young and old, in prison, bleeding from the feet, others with infected legs – women who were no longer able to stand and forced to drag themselves between solitary and torture cells in block 209, crawling blindfolded while keeping their hijab in place by gripping it between teeth clenched in fear, anger and agony. I saw them myself, crawling from one end of the block corridor to the other, leaving a bloody trail smeared on the floor behind them.

  Thousands of young women taken to the prisons and torture chambers of the Islamic regime received similar treatment – the same physical and mental assault faced by male prisoners, plus the semi-routine use of rape.

  The regime has never denied the rape of hundreds, possibly thousands, of women held to be virgins when condemned to death. This final terror is lawful, and justified by religion as taught by the ayatollahs.

  The Islamic regime is an enemy of more than half of our population. Women cannot advance their interests while this regime continues to exist. Thousands of women have been, and continue to be, held in its prisons and many more have lost their lives – all for doing no more than struggling for their rights. This is a testimony to the prominent role women play in the struggle against the Islamic regime.

  Ultimately, the Islamic regime will be shattered on the rock of women’s resistance, which all its terror and brutality can only strengthen. The regime is sitting on a volcano; it is just a matter of when it erupts.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE ISLAMIC COURTS

  When a suspect is arrested he will not be told what he is being charged with. Neither will he be allowed to consult a lawyer throughout his interrogation. Almost all suspects will be tortured, sometimes so severely that they die. During this time most prisoners will be held in solitary. They will not be allowed visits from their families before their file is completed.

  The defendant will then be taken before an Islamic court. This is held in secret in the prison. It has no jury and no counsel for the defence. What is presented as evidence of guilt has been extracted under severe torture. The defendant cannot present witnesses in his or her defence. There is no right of appeal.

  A prisoner is usually taken to court blindfolded. They have no idea who their accusers are, who has given evidence against them or what the prosecution case is. Court proceedings are summary – often barely five minutes. Often the presiding judge (a mullah) is also the prosecutor and court recorder. In some cases, these judges have also acted as executioner. One famous mullah, Ayatollah Khalkhali, who died in 2003, was known as ‘the hanging judge’ and acted in exactly this way during the first years of the Islamic regime.

  Another, Hadi Ghaffari, participated in the capture, torture, interrogation and execution of many prisoners in Evin between 1980 and 1984. Now he also is a sitting member of the parliament, and heads a large industrial complex which used to produce women’s and men’s underwear under the name of Starlight during the Shah’s reign. This lucrative business, now the Al-Hadi Foundation, was given to him by a decree of Ayatollah Khomeini, designating it a non-profit making organisation under Hadi Ghaffari’s care.

  The only others present at these Islamic court trials are security guards. The judge will invariably accuse the defendant of being an enemy of God, the people, Islam and the Imam Khomeini, a paid stooge of imperialism, Israel and Saddam Hussein and variations on these themes. These rantings constitute the reading of the charges, the presentation of the prosecution case and the summing-up, all in one. It is the nearest the accused gets to the proprieties of a trial.

  Over the past 15 years, hundreds of thousands of political prisoners have gone to these courts subjected to a barrage of accusations, sentenced and thrown back to the cells – all in less time than it takes to make a cup of tea. Tens of thousands have been summarily executed, others have been flogged and tortured before being shot.

  Custodial sentences begin from the day of the trial, not from the day of arrest. I spent a year and a half in prison before my trial; others spent two or three years. All this is time served in addition to the sentence handed down by the court.

  The prisoner will be held on remand until something can be unearthed about him for trial. One trial may not be the end of it. At any time during a sentence, prisoners can be brought before another court for retrial. Many of my own comrades were retried in this manner and their sentences increased – some were summarily executed.

  Sentences included public hanging, the firing squad or worse. Ali Shokouhi, the general secretary of Rahe Kargar, was given 500 lashes before being shot, for the crime of defending Marxism at his trial. Manijeh Hodayi, a female member of Peykar, was given the same sentence, again for openly defending her revolutionary activities against the Islamic regime.

  These are not isolated cases. Many others, most nameless and undocumented, suffered
the same brutal end for standing by their principles.

  Evin’s Islamic courts, where I was tried, are located in a central building, also housing branches of the Islamic prosecutor’s office. Here, too, was the office responsible for the transfer of prisoners from one jail to another, throughout the country. It was also a holding centre for those awaiting trial.

  Interrogations take place on the ground floor of the courthouse. A prisoner due for interrogation will be taken from his block to a corridor in the central building, and wait to be dragged to the interrogation cell. Whenever I was here, I could hear the rhythmic thwack of the interrogators’ sticks and the screams and cries of the tortured. Prisoners going to the infirmary came through this building, the central nervous system for the prison through which we would pass en route from one horror to the next.

  Paradoxically, I always looked forward to my visits because it brought together prisoners from all over the prison and further afield – it gave us a chance to find out what was happening outside our own little corner. If I were lucky enough to sit next to a recently arrested prisoner, I might pick up bits and pieces about what was happening outside.

  Curiosity had its dangers, however. The person sitting next to me could be a Tavab or even an interrogator, trying to trap me into giving information or encouraging you to break prison rules – a common tactic used by the guards. Even if the new companion was all right, you could be caught murmuring fragments of prison news by one of the many guards who constantly patrolled back and forth.

  Early one morning, 18 months after my arrest, I was taken from my cell to Evin’s central building. I was put amongst about 50 others who sat facing the wall, blindfolded. None of us knew where we were headed for. As I sat there, I heard my first name, then my father’s, called out several times by a guard. I hesitantly raised my hand. The guard yanked on my sleeve and ordered me to follow him up a flight of stone steps. Then he ordered me to sit in a corridor and I was on my own.