A State of Fear

by Dr Reza Ghaffari

  About three hours passed before another guard arrived and called out my name again. I raised my hand and was led to the next port of call. As I walked in his wake, I tried to watch him from below my blindfold. With a start, I realised that his head only came up to my chest – he could not have been more than 14 years old, striding along with an oversized Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.

  I was taken down a narrow corridor to a room on the left. My young guard went behind a desk. There were two other desks in the room. The one on the right had a man of 50 to 60 years old behind it. I later found out that he was called Mirfendereski, a legal expert in the Ministry of Justice and the court recorder. Facing him was a young, stocky mullah with a light complexion. Now I knew that this must be the Islamic court. I warned myself to be careful. My life would depend on the answers I gave to their questions.

  The mullah told me to take off my blindfold. He was flicking through a thick file in a jerky nervous manner, his thick beard nearly brushing the pages as he turned them. Years later I found out his name was Haji Mobasheri, a man responsible for executing thousands. He asked me my name, my father’s name and my occupation, all the time leafing through my file. Then he asked, ‘Is there a gun involved in your case?’

  ‘No,’ I replied.

  He then began to ask the same questions that I had been asked so many times before. The older man opposite, who was also flicking through a file, lifted his eyes to me and asked, ‘Are you sure there is no gun involved in this case?’ It was obvious that they had not even attempted to properly review the paperwork for my case.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ve never even touched a gun. I wouldn’t know how to use one.’

  The questioning was interrupted by a shout from Haji Mobasheri: ‘All you counter-revolutionaries have taken up arms against the Islamic Republic. If a donkey is caught in heavy traffic, it will stop and wait for it to clear before it moves again. You communists haven’t even got that amount of sense. You tried to move against our revolution at its height, without waiting for things to settle. That’s why we have killed you by the tens of thousands.’

  ‘Sir, I swear on Imam Khomeini’s head that I have had nothing to do with guns.’

  Neither had read the case notes. They were just hoping that I would confess to having a gun. If I did that, it would be a short journey from the court to the firing squad. There was no way I was going to plead guilty to charges that I had spent a year and a half on the torture rack denying.

  ‘Shut up,’ snapped the mullah. ‘Until you come up with the information that you are holding back, you will be sent back to 209 – till you rot, if necessary.’

  So that was my trial – I could have written it down in full on the back of a cigarette packet.

  My file was forwarded to Section 6 of the Islamic prosecutor’s office – ‘repeat interrogations’. I went back to 209, to go through the mill, again. The chief interrogator, Masoud, told me to sign a statement, that read: ‘Having refused to accept the charges at my first trial, I give the right to the court to hand down the death penalty if the interrogators are able to find any new information incriminating me.’

  I signed this, telling them, ‘You can’t get any incriminating evidence on me, anyway.’ It took the interrogators nine more months to get enough new material to warrant another trial. This time, when I was taken back to Evin’s central block, I noticed that there was another person sitting in the middle of the court room. When Haji Mobasheri, the judge, told me to take off my blindfold, I saw this person was a heavily-veiled woman. When she spoke, I knew she was Mariam, Farhad’s wife. She was there to give evidence against me. From the hesitation in her voice, and what she said, it was obvious she had been through a tremendous ordeal.

  Mariam asked the judge if she could say, ‘Hello’ to me. She said that after her husband’s execution, she had changed her mind about politics and the Islamic regime. She said that she had been sentenced to death but was hoping to have this commuted. I showed no reaction, but Farhad’s execution had come as a shock. The last time I had seen him was when we were separated soon after our arrival in Evin. I had heard nothing since. The little he had said had obviously been too much.

  ‘Brother Masoud, the chief interrogator, wanted me to come to the court to give further evidence about you. First I refused, as I didn’t want to incriminate you. I’m sorry that it’s me who is responsible for destroying your life. But lots of other information has been given about you by other prisoners. You shouldn’t insist on denying it all. Accept some, and the judge will have a freer hand to pass sentence.’

  As they did on Farhad, I thought bitterly.

  I said, ‘Most of this information has been given by you, and those arrested with you. No one else has incriminated me. Why should I accept your statements?’

  Mobasheri turned to her and asked, ‘Was this man a member of your organisation?’

  ‘I have no information that would support that claim,’ replied Mariam. ‘Only my husband had that information, but he never told me.’

  The judge then asked me, ‘Did you have a cadre name within your organisation?’

  ‘I have a pen name I write under,’ I answered, ‘but you couldn’t call it a cadre name. I was using it ten years before the Islamic revolution. I have evidence to prove this at home.’

  Then the judge went through the charges. I even got the donkey fable again. He probably trotted out this tired little tale to everyone who came through the doors and had forgotten I’d already heard it. The court ended at this point, and I was returned to my cell.

  When I looked back at what had taken place in court, I realised that Mariam had played her hand with great skill. Even though under the shadow of the executioner, she had withheld extremely valuable information, any bit of which could have sent me to the firing squad. Rather than incriminate me, she had protected me. She had also told me that her husband was dead, that she too was under sentence of death and that her appearance was no act of wilful betrayal, but under of the pressure from the chief interrogator of Section 6.

  The Islamic court is nothing more than the continuation of the interrogation procedures, with the difference that in 209 the information is extracted through torture, whereas in court, judges such as Gilani and Mobasheri force prisoners to incriminate themselves through the threat of the firing squad. The aim is to squeeze out the last piece of information. This not only incriminates the man in the dock, but anyone else.

  The morning of my move to the Golden Fortress in autumn 1983 was the only indication I had that I had been sentenced. This happened three months after the trial. But it was another six months before I found out what the sentence was – 15 years.

  When a woman was hauled up before the courts, she would first be asked whether she was married or not. Then the judge would generally remark that the accused was involved in politics to get a husband. If she was married then she was judged to be successful in it, if she was single, then she was obviously still trying. Older women were told, ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, chasing men at your age. Why, you’re older than my sister, and she has three grandchildren!’ If the accused had children, she too was told to hang her head in shame – running about with big ideas in her head when she should be at home looking after the family. That a woman could be political because she believed in what she was fighting for was incomprehensible to the Islamic judiciary.

  Shohreh’s story follows here, as told to a woman who shared some of her time in jail. Shohreh had a father who became a candidate for the Mojahedin in the first Islamic election in 1980. It did not take him long to realise that he should flee the country before the Islamic courts sent him to the next world. Young Shohreh, aged 14 at the time, was brought into Evin prison by the Islamic guards. She was told that she was a hostage for her father. Until her father came to Evin in person, she would not be released.

  Shohreh underwent intense torture. When the interrogators in Evin were disappointed with the results, namely their lack
of success at extracting her father’s location, they accused her of being a member of Rahe Kargar, of being a Fedayeen Minority supporter and of having responsibility for issuing propaganda for the east Tehran section of Rahe Kargar. If this was not enough subversive activity for anyone, she was accused of having responsibility for the provisions committee for the west Tehran section of the Rahe Kargar organisation. Imagine, a 14-year-old girl, controlling the intricate planning operations over whole cities of not one but two large political groups.

  Under these pretexts, she was taken off to the so-called Islamic courts of justice. There, the court was presented with signed confessions for this so-called criminal conduct. These signed confessions could have only been obtained under torture. The court branded her a mohareb, a non-believer who had taken up arms against Islam. This is what she told her comrades after just ten minutes in the court: ‘The judge, after asking me my name and my father’s name, asked the prosecutor, “Is she to be shot?” The prosecutor [the same person who interrogated her in the torture room] replied, “Yes, Haji.” Then the judge said to me, “Get lost! We won’t see you anymore!”’ She was returned to her cell to collect her belongings and took the opportunity to recount the brief court appearance to her cellmates. Then she was shot.

  Harir, who we have already met, recounts her brief visit to the courthouse in Sanandaj in 1990: ‘Five and a half months after my arrest, one day around ten in the morning, a security guard opened the door to my solitary cell. He said to me, “You can take a shower today and wash your clothes.” Two months had passed since I had last been permitted to do so.

  ‘As I had no other clothes with me in the cell, after my shower and laundry I had to return to my cell wearing the wet clothes. Back in my cell, I had to remove my washed clothing to allow it to dry. Dry or not, I had to put them back on fairly quickly. I did not want to be seen naked by the lecherous eyes of the guards. Luckily, none of them came by before my clothes had dried.

  ‘Later, a guard returned, saying, “Pick up your bag. We are leaving.” I was led out of the solitary block. I could see his distinct military uniform from underneath my blindfold. I guessed the trip must be one that would take me outside of this prison. One guard came up to me and handcuffed my wrists. I started to argue with him. “Who do you think I am, a criminal?”

  ‘The young guard told me in a quiet murmur, “Don’t be angry. Today these cuffs are on your wrists, tomorrow they will be on mine.”

  ‘Then a deep, loud voice bellowed out, “Brothers, are you ready?” A number of voices replied. “Yes, we are ready.” Then again, “How about your cartridges?” “They are ready too, brother,” came the reply, repeated by all the guards around me. “Get ready to fire, God be with you!” roared the deep voice one more time.

  ‘I was very shaken. I wondered whether they would be taking me to Evin, perhaps to complete the court proceedings against me. But the car that I had been bundled into stopped somewhere in the middle of the city. The guards with me told me to take my blindfold off. I was taken into a building, which I recognised as the central headquarters of the police during the Shah’s regime.

  ‘They took me to the second floor, where I was led to the Islamic revolutionary court department. There were two rectangular tables full of papers and files relating to prisoners in the court. The judge sat behind one table and the court recorder behind the other.

  ‘The recorder had a thick beard, but was wearing no Islamic robe or turban. He looked around 40-45 years old. The judge was a young man, only about 30. He too had neither cassock nor turban. He was wearing what looked like house pyjamas, made of a very fine white cloth – cotton or silk. His trouser legs had ridden up to his knee so I could see the lower half of his leg from where I was sitting. On his desk, in addition to many fat prisoners’ files, there was also a large aluminium tray full of melon peel. By one corner of this table, close to where he was sitting, stood a black-and-white lamb. Every so often, the lamb would bleat and the judge would pick up a couple of pieces of melon peel and fed the lamb with them. I was expecting to see the common features of the Islamic court, not a judge in pyjamas with his trousers rolled up to his knees playing nursemaid to a lamb.

  ‘The recorder told me to take a seat, one of several in the middle of the floor which faced the judge and the recorder. I took a seat and as soon as I sat down the court recorder started to read out the charges made against me by the interrogators: “Armed uprising against the Islamic state. Composing poetry of an anti-Islamic nature. Inciting the community and school-children to oppose the Islamic regime. Reading and distributing anti-Islamic government propaganda.”

  ‘As I was listening to this list of fabrications and falsehoods, the judge interrupted. “Are you Harir? You should have been put in front of the firing squad the last time that you were here! Go to Hell!”’ He didn’t take his eyes off the lamb as he spoke, stroking its haunches and feeding it from the palm of his hand. Upon his curt dismissal, the court recorder dragged me out of the room and handed me back to the guards who had driven me from prison that morning.

  ‘Back in the jail, I was taken from a solitary cell to a normal block, occupied by many women inmates. I thought that I would definitely be set free, that the judge had exonerated me – in his own peculiar way – as there was no incriminating evidence against me whatsoever. Only my brother had been an active supporter of one of the opposition groups, Komoleh.

  ‘Five days later, a guard came to see me and told me again to collect my plastic bag of possessions and follow him. Again I was taken from the prison to the old police headquarters building. This time I thought that I would be set free. There, they made me sign a piece of paper acknowledging the final judgement on my case. I was so excited that I could hardly stop myself from weeping with joy and relief.

  ‘Just as I picked up the pen to sign the document, I saw that, to my horror, it was not one for my release, but for imprisonment for eight more years. I refused to sign, but the guards told me that if I did not then the judge could easily get angry and change his decision from eight years to life. Reluctantly, sobbing away, I signed the wretched document.’

  CHAPTER 22

  ESCAPE

  In mid-1990 a thaw began. We were allowed family visits in Gohardasht. Restrictions on books and other literature were relaxed. Medical treatment was made more readily available. And forced communal prayer was abandoned. Around 200 prisoners who had completed their sentences but had refused to make televised confessions were finally paroled, often up to five years after their proper release date. Another 500 prisoners received pardons. Others, many of whom had spent eight to ten years in jail, were given leave of absence for a month or so, to stay with their families. I was one of these.

  My family had been campaigning hard for my release, going from one government agency and department to the next to put my case. One mullah asked for one million Touman (about £90,000) for my freedom. My wife and father talked to me about this on a prison visit but I made it clear that this was unacceptable, even if the cash could be raised. But to discuss this, we had to resort to gestures and allusions because we were separated by screens in the visiting area. If someone from the prison authorities found out that someone else from another department was going to get his palm greased, then they would blow the whistle – not out of any honest reaction to corruption, but from pique that someone else was making money and not them.

  Eventually, a prison middle man managed to extort 200,000 Touman from a cousin of mine who was naive enough to take his vague promises of release as good coin. He’d been had, as my name was already listed for a month’s home leave.

  Brought before Haji Nasirian in his office in late 1990, I was told that the arrangement was my family had provided the deeds to a cousin’s house as security against me fleeing the country once outside the prison gates. Thoughts flooded into my head, but one raged through like a torrent, sweeping all else aside: Once I’m out, I’m never going back! How do I do it? How do I get out an
d stay out?’ I wasn’t going to be satisfied by a peek under the blindfold at freedom. I was determined that the blindfold was going to come off for good.

  Two years earlier, I would not have accepted such a compromise. But the massacres had made it plain that we were not only prisoners, but hostages. The regime would not hesitate to kill every one of us whenever it considered it expedient. Momentarily, they had left the door ajar. We needed to push it and run before it slammed shut forever.

  This had to be done without a compromise of principle. Freedom at the expense of a confession, of a renunciation of beliefs, or of disclosing the names of others would have been too high a price. But, just for the moment, it was possible to walk through the jail’s heavy iron gates without such a toll being demanded.

  About half the 200 men on my block had already visited their families and returned. They were eagerly quizzed about their impressions. The answers seemed encouraging: the prisoners had been well received, even welcomed, by those outside. This was in contrast to the early 1980s, when there was no wide support for the opposition and neighbours who you had known for years would inform on you to the Islamic committees. This identification with the regime had evaporated, leaving behind sullen resentment of it, and an increasingly open respect for those who had fought back and paid the price.

  About a week after my interview with Haji Nasirian, I was called to a visit from my family at about 10am, along with the other nine men in my visiting batch. My family had been waiting at the prison since 5am, filling in forms and the like, as had many other families on this standard visiting day. Most families wanted to get in and out of the prison as swiftly as possible. Visits were often harrowing experiences, and Evin wasn’t a place you wanted to hang around.