What happens in the Prisons of the Ayatollahs?

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What happens in the Prisons of the Ayatollahs?

 

This section contains the testimonies of the persecuted Ahlus Sunnah, who are, in their totality, utterly reliable. This testimony is not limited to one or two individuals or to one or two regions. The researcher of truth can contact the honourable witnesses themselves in Turkey, the Gulf, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to hear it from their own mouths. Therefore, no fair-minded person can doubt that the testimony of the Ahlus Sunnah has reached the level of tawatur (mass transmission).

We have also published in this paper excerpts from a report by Amnesty International. These excerpts concur in their content with what the Ahlus Sunnah have mentioned. We were keen to mention these excerpts so that all people may know of our innocence from oppression and from the oppressors who don the garment of Islam, and of our sorrow for the afflicted victims whatever their orientations may be. For the apostate there is a prescribed punishment, and for the fornicator there is a prescribed punishment, and so on. However, these forms of torture are barbaric Magian practices; the religion of Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala, which He has ordained for His servants, is far removed from them.

For whom the testimony of the Ahlus Sunnah, the reports of Amnesty International, and the accounts that have reached the level of tawatur are of no consequence, the lamp of his intellect has been extinguished, his senses have been blunted, and he has been enslaved by his whims.

 

Testimony of the Ahlus Sunnah

We still hear from time to time from some of those who were released from the prisons of the Iranian government, via foreign broadcasts, of the tragedies of the oppressed, especially the Muslims among them, and which must be accused of falsehood^[1] in what they broadcast about any lesser government, given that they are in complete servitude to the interests of the major colonial powers. We hear reports about the system’s maltreatment of political prisoners. However, the fact that many of the government’s opponents oppose it only because it bears a weak form of Islam, coupled with the fact that those broadcasts are, as we mentioned, biased. They make those who would champion the cause—if clear evidence came to them—act with caution, so they would not hasten to believe those reports, even though they could not deny their truthfulness given the government’s aggression outside the prisons, which leaves no doubt that sanctity and honour have no value in its eyes.

For instance, last year the government arrested dozens of righteous youth from the Ahlus Sunnah, headed by the leader of the Ahlus Sunnah in Iran, Sheikh Ahmed Moftizadeh, and placed them in the prisons of Madan, Sanandaj, Tabriz, Saman, Kermanshah, and Zahedan. However, it released about thirty of them after a few months. They were in the prisons of Kermanshah (the capital of one of the western provinces) and Zahedan (the capital of Balochistan province), so that people would not feel that this matter concerned all of the Ahlus Sunnah, and so that the operations of persecution and suppression in Kurdistan province (Kurdistan province, whose capital is Sanandaj, is part of wider Kurdistan, which encompasses several provinces) would appear contrary to the true nature of the matter, which is the desire to eradicate the Ahlus Sunnah or to compel them to become Shia.

With the release of these believing brothers—whose testimonies must be given due weight—from the prisons, it became possible for us to learn a little of what goes on in those prisons that the government calls “the universities that manufacture human beings”. Let it be known that what our brothers witnessed and learned of is but a tiny fraction of the procedures that are aggressive towards humanity. This is because the circumstances that would enable the government to make a decisive decision regarding the followers of the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, whom it has arrested and continues to arrest, have not yet been finalised. And it fears that the future may bring events that force it to empty their prisons, or it may see that releasing some of them under special circumstances is to its advantage. Therefore, it refrains from treating them the same way others are treated and tries to keep them, as much as possible, away from the prisons where horrific massacres are carried out.

We listen to a brother from among those who spent six months in the prisons and were then released. He relates to us his observations from the time the Khorasanis raided the house of Sheikh Moftizadeh in the city of Kermanshah. This occurred days after the meeting was held—a meeting that was convened at his invitation on the anniversary of the establishment of the Central Consultative Council for the Sunnis. They then arrested the brother and the son of the Sheikh and others who had come as guests. (The Sheikh himself had left Kermanshah before the incident and gone to Tehran, and they arrested him there.) The brother was released after six months. The brother says:

 

I was in the house along with the son of the Sheikh and others, on the 26^th of Shawwal, ten days after the meeting was held. The clock indicated half past nine when someone knocked at the door. When we opened the door, we were surprised as the guards burst into the house upon us with brutality and violence. We were drinking tea at that hour, so we invited them to drink with us, but they responded with insults and abuse and struck one of the guests. They began to break the furniture and belongings. Then some of them took us out of the house. Suddenly, the roofs of the neighbours’ houses and the street were filled with armed guards. They gathered the residents of those houses in the street and put them into cars. They did all of this just to arrest a few unarmed individuals.

They anticipated that the government in those days would move to arrest the believing adherents of the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam, who follow the path of the first forerunners among the Muhajirun and Ansar. There was nothing that necessitated surrounding the house in that manner, nor anything that necessitated the coming of armed men, for the Islamic movement had previously announced that it was in the stage of da’wah and education, and therefore it categorically rejects armed resistance.

We learned afterwards that those of them who remained in the house had scattered the Sheikh’s books in the courtyard of the house and stolen whatever their hands fell upon of money, clothes, tapes, and other items. They also took from us whatever money we had with us.

Then they took us to the guards’ headquarters. Before taking us inside, they blindfolded us with pieces of cloth. Then they separated us from one another and began to insult and beat us. They put me in a place and began asking me various questions. Every time I answered them with a reply that was not to their liking, they would confront me with beating and kicking. This situation lasted for two days and two nights while I was bound hand and foot. Then I was transferred to a place where I found others who had been arrested after our detention. After a few days, other brothers were brought from various cities of the province. Then, after conducting investigations with them, they took everyone to Dizl Abad prison. The Sheikh’s son and I remained subjected to psychological torture for an entire week, during which they threatened us with execution and made us listen to false reports about the other brothers. Then we too were transferred to that prison.

In that prison, we would spend our time in recitation, studying the Qur’an and the Arabic language, and performing prayers in congregation, which greatly influenced the other prisoners. The guards would meet with us every few days to debate us, hoping to turn us away from our orientation. They would try to tempt us with the pleasures of worldly life, but when they despaired of us, they ceased doing that. Among the things they would debate us with was their statement, “As long as the Imam is alive, there is no meaning to consultation nor any need for it.” And their statement, “The word al shura that came in the Qur’an does not mean that there should be tashawur (mutual consultation), but rather it has another meaning.” And their claim, “Those who resolved and decided matters through shura during the era of the Caliphate desired nothing by it except leadership.” And the statement of the director of the Department of Education—whom they had brought to discuss with our brothers who were teachers and educators, “Leave aside reminding us of the verses of the Qur’an; use regular speech and know that we consider the ruling of the religious jurist to be higher than the ruling of Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala!”

Exalted is He and high above what they say by great sublimity.^[2]

When they saw that what we were doing—establishing the prayers in congregation, reciting the Qur’an, and interpreting it—was influencing the other prisoners, and that the number of participants joining us in performing the prayers in congregation was increasing every day, they forbade us from it. But we did not comply.

During those days, they permitted our relatives to visit us. All the brothers were brought forward except for me; I was taken to trial. As for me, they summoned me to their office, so I thought they would release me for trial as well. But I found them saying, “We are permitting you to have a visit once more because we will release you.” This news heartened me psychologically, but I tried not to appear in a manner that would make them gloat. I also tried, during my relatives’ visit, to be as far as possible from anxiety and distress. Furthermore, my conduct in prison did not allow the news to spread; only one of the brothers learned of it. Their displeasure with our programs of recitation, interpretation, and holding congregational prayers reached the point where they began to manufacture pretexts to move us away from other prisoners into solitary confinement cells. They demanded that we attend the Rawdah ceremonies and the du’a’ of Kumayl. When we refused to do that, they moved us to a cell where we spent four months. The adjacent cells were dwellings for men and women affiliated with political parties opposed to the government. As for the men, some were in communal cells and some in solitary ones. As for the women, there was only one of them in each cell. In these cells, crimes and assaults against humanity would occur. I will mention some examples of them.

The cells, due to their recent construction and poor ventilation, were filled with foul odours, to the extent that most of the prisoners fell ill. They were never allowed to see the sun, let alone enjoy its warmth, as they would blindfold them when taking them out to relieve themselves. They only permitted them to go out to relieve themselves and perform ablution four times per day and night. They were the ones who determined the times for this; for example, one time would be at four in the morning and the next at two in the afternoon. The allotted time for relieving oneself was only two minutes.

As for bathing and washing clothes, they only permitted this twice a month, and the allotted time for it did not exceed fifteen minutes. Moreover, the water was cold and the winter cold was biting. Among the things they would torment the prisoners with was broadcasting anthems and Rawdah ceremonies in the cell block via loudspeakers from morning until midnight. One of the methods they employed for psychological torture was bringing devastating false news and taking some of us out of the cell at night. To put it into greater context, this meant that a death sentence had been issued against that person and the time for its execution had come.^[3] Other methods included reviling the first forerunners among the Muhajirun and Ansar, and the great slander against the Mother of the Believers, Aisha radiya Llahu ‘anha. During one of the discussions that took place between us and them, one of their ‘religious men’, who was called “Imami,” said to us, “In truth, we are not only opposed to you, but we also oppose the government of consultation that existed after the era of the Prophet salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam. We consider it and Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman to be usurpers, and we consider Aisha to be a rebel.”

Glory be to You [O Allah]; this is a great slander^[4]

He then said, “We have censored two hundred and eighty words from being uttered on radio and television, all of them for reviling the Caliphs and other Sahabah, and for reviling Aisha. As for our closed meetings among the Shia, we revile them all.”

Among the most severe psychological tortures for a person whose humanity has not been erased is to see a human being—whatever their perspective and belief—be wrongfully executed, or to see a sister whose honour is assaulted and whose sanctity is violated, then killed unjustly, while he possesses no power to defend him or her. This is what we endured night and day, as not a single night passed without an execution.^[5] The torture would reach its peak when the screams of a woman would mix with the firing of rifles and the shouts of the guards, “Long live Khomeini, the Leader!” piercing the tranquil, silent night.

On one of the nights, the lights went out around half past ten. The brothers said, “Let’s spend the time chanting religious poems until the electricity comes back.” Two hours passed and it did not return. Suddenly, screams of women rose from the adjacent cells. The brothers could not help but weep, for they were unable to rescue those pitiful women from the clutches of those predatory wolves. When morning came, we asked a man who brought us food—those whom the government labels al tawwabun (the repenters), due to them submitting to the government and spying on their behalf—about the cause of the incident. He wept, then said, “I have seen far worse than this. The reason is that the Shia believe it is not permissible to execute a virgin. So, if a virgin is to be executed, she is contracted in a mut’ah marriage to one of the guards. After she has been assaulted, they execute her.” (The ‘repentant’ man was also Shia.)^[6]

The men were in a better situation than the women. Not one of the women could move freely in her cell or, for example, loosen her hair, because the guards would not avert their gaze from them for a moment. I even once saw one of them standing at the bathroom window, looking at women who were bathing inside. When they saw him, he began to insult those pitiful women, saying, “Why did you enter the bathroom naked? You should be wearing clothes!” And he struck them. As for confronting them with filthy words—which would not be uttered by a man who possesses any share of humanity^[7]—that was an easy matter for them.

Before they separated us from the other prisoners, a man of approximately sixty years old was with us. They had struck him 1,800 lashes with wires on his back and feet. He carried with him in his pocket pieces of flesh from his feet that had fallen off due to the wire strikes. Despite this, the man said, “What pains me the most is that they once summoned me and said, ‘Either you confess, or we will torture your wife.’ I heard her screams, and she is now in the adjacent room. At that moment, I heard a woman’s scream from that room, so I surrendered to them out of fear for my wife and said, ‘I will sign whatever you want me to, provided you release my wife.’ But later, when I met my wife during her visit, I asked her about the matter and she denied it. I then realised that the woman was not my wife, and their action was a deception to extract a confession from me.” The torture became so unbearable for the man that he took a quantity of detergent and swallowed it in a suicide attempt. But Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala did not will for him to die.

There were two others with us who had previously been in the detention centre of the Central Committee. They would relate to us that there was a man whom they had beaten with wires for forty-five consecutive days, receiving two hundred to three hundred lashes each day. One night, they awoke from sleep around half past two to find a fire had broken out in their room. “We discovered this man had wrapped himself in a blanket, poured gasoline over it, and set himself on fire. He was breathing his last breaths, saying in a faint voice, ‘Blessed am I, for I have escaped them.’ We tried to extinguish the fire but could not. We were forced to throw ourselves from the window, so the guards promptly opened fire on us, thinking we were trying to escape. When the guards learned what had happened, they rushed to the room. The man had already died, so they threw him from the window, cursing and insulting him. They issued an order to confiscate his property because he had allegedly misappropriated the wealth of the public treasury by taking the blanket. Later, we heard that they arrested his wife.

These two men; they beat one of them six hundred times with wires and demanded that he lead them to the opponents. He mentioned that he knew no one, but he was finally compelled to give them several names. When they rounded those people up and gathered them with him, he swore that he knew nothing incriminating about them. So, they released those individuals and demanded that he confess to knowing others. This continued. Every time they brought a group, he would swear to their innocence, and they would be released after insults and torture, which reached the point where they took one group to the execution site and fired shots over their heads, making them believe they were being executed.

As for us, the defenders of the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah salla Llahu ‘alayhi wa sallam and the first forerunners, although their treatment of us differed from their treatment of others, it was not far removed from their assaults. Among us were those whose hand was broken, among us were those whose tooth was broken, among us were those whose rib was broken. So may the curse of Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala be upon the oppressors.

We have limited our discussion regarding the Khomeinist prisons to what this brother recounted to us from what he saw with his own eyes, so that we may avoid speaking based on conjecture. For indeed, the hearing, the sight, and the heart—all of those will be questioned. Let no one think that we intend to depict the full reality of those prisons with these few words. Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala knows it best—He who knows what is open and what is hidden. We seek refuge with Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala from a system that crushes that humiliated humanity under the feet of oppression and tyranny. To Allah alone, the One, the Subduer, belongs the reckoning for these wicked ones. And those who have wronged will soon know what a terrible end they will meet.

Maktab Qur’an

03/09/1403 AH

 

What was presented in the previous report issued by the Maktab Qur’an is not all that the brothers—the Ahlus Sunnah—mentioned about the prisons of the Ayatollahs. In their report, The Issue of the Ahlus Sunnah in Iran, page 54, Ustadh Moftizadeh pointed out some methods of persecution and torture that led to the martyrdom of a number of brothers. From a review of the torture methods they employed, we note that this phase was more savage and brutal than the previous phase, because during the first phase, they were hoping for the youth of the Ahlus Sunnah to recant their views.

On page 82, they mentioned the Sunni sheikh who criticised Wilayat al Faqih. After a week, he announced his repentance on the radio. When his companions asked him about this contradiction, he answered, “By Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala, I have not recanted my belief, but I was forced to do so when they brought ten young men from the Khomeini Guard into my prison cell, along with a man wearing a black turban. He was urging them to commit sodomy with me unless I publicly recanted my opinion. He told these young men, ‘You will be rewarded by Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala for this act of yours, and no ritual ablution is required after sodomy.’”

They sentenced Mawlawi Nadhir Ahmed—who was formerly a member of the Iranian Consultative Council—to stoning on the charge of adultery, because he spoke about the merit of the Sahabah radiya Llahu ‘anhum and explained the ruling concerning those who revile them. Through severe torture, they forced him to confess before the public on television that he was an agent for Iraqi intelligence. He is a righteous man and a practicing scholar, far above suspicion, and his only crime was his defence of the Sahabah. We will mention other examples in another section of this book regarding the crimes of the Ayatollahs against the Ahlus Sunnah, in addition to what we have mentioned previously.

 

Excerpts from a Report by Amnesty International

1. Amnesty International conducted interviews with former prisoners. Among them was a member of the Mojahedin-e-Khalq organisation who was in Tabriz prison from February 1981 to September 1983. The former prisoner said:

 

When you share a cell with political prisoners, a strong and special bond forms with them. With the passage of time, I began to know my cellmates and understand them. These cellmates would be executed, then new prisoners would come to my cell. I would begin to get to know them in the same way I had gotten to know their predecessors. This same thing repeated itself many times. In the end, I began to wish they would take me for execution the next time. In addition to the physical torture, there was psychological torture. They forced us to load a truck with bodies, some of which were missing an arm or a leg. They forced me to do this three times. I would gather the bodies into sacks and then load the truck.

Sometimes they would execute the others all at once. Other times, they would execute only one of them. Before that, they would allow the others to gather for a short period. My cell was located near the execution yard, so I could hear what transpired in these gatherings and the crying that would follow the executions.

 

2. A female student, who spent the period between September 1981 and March 1982 in Evin and Qezel Hesar prisons, described to Amnesty International her experience of living in a cell that housed one hundred and twenty women, their ages ranging from students to the elderly. Some of them were executed. The student said:

 

One night, they brought a young girl named Zahirah directly from the courtroom to her cell. The court had sentenced her to death. She was confused and distraught, seeming as if she did not know why she was there. After a while, she settled down to sleep next to me, but she would suddenly wake up from time to time, frightened, clinging to me and asking if they would really execute her. I would embrace her with my care to calm her fears and reassure her that they would not execute her. But they came at four in the morning and took her to be executed. She was sixteen.

 

3. Former prisoners testified that the authorities would force them to look at the bodies of execution victims, as stated by one of them:

 

The atmosphere was filled with weeping and wailing. One of the guards said to me, “We will remove your blindfold. Do not look around. Look only straight ahead.” When I opened my eyes, I saw a body hanging from something. His arms were bandaged up to the elbows and his legs up to the knees. It was very terrifying, and his name was written on a card attached to his neck. A guard stood next to the body, prodding it with a stick, making it spin around repeatedly. The other guards were observing the prisoners to gauge their reactions.^[8]

 

4. Since the beginning of the Revolution in 1979, arrests have extended to encompass the entire political sphere. Many supporters of opposition groups have been targeted. The authorities have arrested a large number of members of ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds who are struggling for greater autonomy.

Many prisoners in Iran are prisoners of conscience who suffer detention merely for adhering to beliefs they have expressed through non-violent means. International Amnesty organisations are unable to estimate the number of prisoners of conscience currently detained due to the difficulties they face in obtaining and verifying information about individual cases.

The arrests have included writers, journalists, doctors, university lecturers, teachers, students, housewives, factory workers, and rural workers.

And some prisoners are elderly, such as a writer of seventy-four years of age who remains imprisoned despite being very ill. He was arrested for the first time in March 1981 and managed to escape later that same year. However, the authorities re-arrested him in December 1981. It was reported that the authorities tortured him during his first period of detention. In early 1987, he was temporarily released and allowed to return to his home under surveillance. Nevertheless, he was returned to prison despite needing medical treatment for a serious illness affecting his stomach and kidney. He also suffers from paralysis in his legs and has nearly lost his eyesight. Furthermore, many prisoners are juveniles and adolescents who were in their schools at the time of their arrest.

 

The Hostages

5. Relatives of opposition political figures are subjected to arrest, either as hostages until wanted individuals are captured, or to pressure those individuals who have been arrested. In this manner, the wives of those suspected of political activities who fled prison were arrested. One of them said to Amnesty International:

 

Men from the Revolutionary Guard came to our house in Isfahan in November 1983 looking for my husband, without having an arrest warrant. My husband had managed to leave the country. When they failed to find him, they said they were determined to take me for just two hours to ‘ask a few questions.’ The Revolutionary Guard took me and my younger sister, who was nineteen years old. However, they released her after six hours. As for me, I was imprisoned for fourteen months.

 

Such arrests, as described, are still ongoing in Iran to this day. In 1985, the authorities detained a woman in Tehran after failing to find her husband. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. The authorities apparently informed her that she would be released if her husband was found. It is believed that this woman is currently in Qezel Hesar prison.

The Iranian authorities have arrested entire families:

 

I was arrested in September 1980. Men from the Revolutionary Guard came to our house and found my father, mother, brother, and younger sister at home. The Revolutionary Guard men locked all of them in one room. When I returned home later, my brother had arrived a short while before me, and we had no knowledge of what was happening. There was a cellar in our house which they took us to, where the Revolutionary Guard men beat us. There were about ten or twelve of them. After that, they took us to the Revolutionary Guard headquarters in Urmia. Fortunately, we managed to convince them to release our parents after a few days of our detention.

 

Every individual has the right to be informed of the reasons for their detention immediately upon arrest, and to be promptly notified of any charges brought against them. This fundamental right is explicitly affirmed by the Iranian constitution. However, in reality, political detainees are often not informed of the reasons for their detention for weeks or even months. It also appears that many individuals have been arrested because their friends or colleagues mentioned their names while under torture.

Amnesty International is also aware of cases where individuals were mistakenly arrested because their names resembled the names of political activists wanted by the security forces.

A former prisoner informed Amnesty International about a man approximately sixty years old whom the authorities imprisoned even though he was receiving legitimate medical treatment in a hospital for a heart condition. He was carried to the prison on a stretcher and remained there for two days before the prison authorities realised his name was similar to that of a well-known political activist and that he was not the wanted person.

Furthermore, the authorities often detain individuals taken from their homes, telling them that they are “wanted to answer some questions” and that this will require their presence for a few hours. However, they may detain them for several months, or even several years. The authorities also insult the relatives of detainees, warn them against inquiring about their fate, and threaten them with imprisonment if they do so.

As for persons arrested outside their homes, they are unable to inform their families about what has happened to them or their whereabouts. And when someone inquires with the competent authorities about the whereabouts of an individual, they sometimes mention that he is in their custody. Therefore, it is not uncommon for families to spend entire months searching for a “lost” relative, inquiring at every prison, every Revolutionary Guard centre, and every Komiteh in the region.

Preventing contact between detainees and their relatives greatly increases the risk of torture and ill-treatment, and needlessly prolongs the anguish for the detainee and all his relatives.

6. A woman, whose testimony is considered representative of many testimonies in the organisation’s possession, described what happened when men from the Revolutionary Guard came to her house in Tehran in November 1983, seeking her husband who was suspected of activity in opposition organisations:

 

Four armed guards stood at our door and asked me if this was my husband’s house. When I answered affirmatively, they rushed inside. Each of them carried an identification card from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. I was in the house with my three children—the eldest being eleven years old, the middle eight years old, and the youngest one year and a few months old—along with my husband’s sister and her two children. After the guards confined all of us in one room and locked the door, they searched the house. When they finished, they allowed me to leave the room for interrogation. They asked me about my husband’s age, education, and occupation. I informed them that my husband was away due to his work. At that point, they took a photograph and relayed a description of him to their headquarters via telephone. The children were crying the entire time, but they did not allow me to take my youngest son to the doctor even though one of his teeth had been extracted that morning and blood was still flowing from his mouth.

Whenever anyone knocked on the door (which happened frequently, since I have kind and concerned neighbours), each guard would position himself in a corner of the room, aiming his weapon at the door as I opened it. They replaced the guards every two hours. When they brought my husband, they took him to another room for interrogation, then to another place, and returned him at one o’clock in the afternoon the following day. When the guards searched the house, they took everything they desired—calculators, books, pens, and even the children’s books. When they returned my husband, it was to take me in his place. My children were crying and clinging to me to prevent me from going, but the guards pushed them aside and ordered me to take my infant with me. When we reached Evin Prison, they blindfolded me and took my infant from me.

 

7. The treatment described in the following testimony is considered typical of much that occurred in the early 1980s:

 

Around 2:30am in September 1981, a young man dressed in civilian clothing came to our house and asked to speak to my son. When I asked him to return in the morning, he insisted on his request. Suddenly, he took a wireless device from his pocket, and I heard someone say, “You’d better come in.” At that moment, Revolutionary Guard men emerged from all directions—even from the roof. There were eleven armed guards inside the house, and a larger number outside that I could not count.

They fell upon me with blows because I did not allow them to enter and pushed me into my wife’s bedroom. I asked them, if they were truly Muslims, to step outside the room so she could cover herself with her clothes. But they showered her with insults and abuse, threatened me with sodomy, threw my wife from the bed, and dragged my son by his hair, beating him. After that, they immediately transferred him to Evin Prison.

As for the rest of the family members, they were taken to a Revolutionary Guard office in western Tehran. They released my wife and daughter the following day. However, they detained me for a week, during which they beat me daily. They also deprived me of food for the first three days. And my son still remains in Evin Prison to this day.

 

Testimony of a Judge

8. A former Islamic Revolutionary judge informed Amnesty International:

 

The behaviour of the Revolutionary Guard stems from their absolute authority in Iran. Theoretically, they receive orders from the office of the general guide concerning security and intelligence matters. Practically, however, they are even able to cause the transfer or dismissal of a religious judge or a Friday prayer imam. Members of the Revolutionary Guard have created an atmosphere that makes judges themselves cautious in dealing with them. Judges consult the Guard when issuing a decision on a case and even when pronouncing a verdict.

 

Detention centres are used throughout Iran; many of these centres are not officially recognised. Some of them are buildings and offices that were formerly used by members of the secret police (SAVAK) during the previous Shah’s era. In addition to these, schools, hotels, offices, and even theatres have been converted into detention centres.

The fundamental right to a fair trial within a reasonable period of detention is not respected in political cases. Due to the absence of a legal limit for pre-trial detention, individuals remain in isolation without trial for weeks or months. According to statements from former detainees, the authorities hoped that some detainees would confess to crimes under the influence of torture, that they would provide information about their political colleagues, or that they would inform on other detainees by revealing secrets of their political activities. These sources confirm that there are people who remain in detention specifically because no information has emerged that could form the basis for charges against them.

Sometimes detainees are interrogated immediately upon arrival at the detention centre. At other times, they are placed in isolated cells and provided with a pen and paper and ordered to write down their problems or narrate their life stories, in addition to the names of every political activist they know. These statements may later be used as a basis for their interrogation.

Some former prisoners spent entire months without being interrogated, and reported that they suffered extreme anguish due to the anticipation and not knowing their fate.

Sometimes detainees are released after spending several months in detention without any charges or trial. The relatives of detainees are required to provide funds or properties as guarantees, or to give personal pledges that the released person will not engage in political activities or leave the country.

Regarding the period sentenced to be served in prison, the time a detainee spends in pre-trial detention is not taken into account. The prison term begins from the time the verdict is issued, even if the detainee has already spent entire years in prison. Furthermore, some individuals remain in prison long after their sentence has expired.

 

Unfair Trials

9. They took me to a building called the court. There was a judge—a mullah of about twenty years old—sitting behind a desk. There were also four chairs arranged in a row on one side of the room. I sat on one of them alongside three other women. There was nothing that connected us politically; each of us had been arrested for reasons different from the others. After our names were called, each was asked about which organisation she belonged to that led to her arrest, and about the nature of her political activities. I answered that I was arrested because the authorities could not find my husband. Another woman said she was at a party when arrested and that she had no political affiliations, weeping as she said this. The session did not last more than five minutes. There was no one in the hall but us, and the trial kept pausing constantly. After five minutes, the questions stopped, and we were ordered to leave the hall.”^[9]

“In the courtroom, the mullah read a list of twenty-five charges against me and said that I had confessed to all of them. Among the charges were my affiliation with the Peykar organisation,^[10] the opposition to Imam Khomeini, and my attempt to brainwash my students. When the mullah asked me if I had anything to say in my defence, I denied all the charges levelled against me because they were fabricated. He said that he knew that all members of my family belonged to Peykar, that I deserved the death sentence, and that he would sentence me to life imprisonment instead so that I would realise that Islam is not without mercy. He also informed me that there were witnesses against me, and when I requested to see them, he ordered I be returned to my cell. When I later received the official notification of my sentence, I found that I had been sentenced to fifteen years in prison.”^[11]

 

Physical Torture

10. Amnesty International conducted detailed interviews with a large number of torture victims who left Iran to live as refugees in other countries. Some of them were examined by doctors at the request of Amnesty International. In all cases, the doctors concluded that the physical scars and described symptoms supported the torture claims both in terms of methods and timing.

Detainees are subjected to torture immediately after their arrest, during their isolation in detention centres used by the Komiteh or the Basidran (Revolutionary Guard), and later in prison where Basidran members serve as the Revolutionary Guard.

Detainees may be subjected to torture immediately upon their arrival at these centres, even though some of them may have already been beaten during transport in vehicles. Once they enter the detention centres, they are at the mercy of their jailers, without any contact with the outside world, and this may last for several months.

The authorities inflict torture upon prisoners to extract confessions about their political activities and to obtain the names and addresses of political activists and the locations of safe houses.

Another motive for using torture is to pressure prisoners to abandon their opinions or renounce their religious beliefs, and sometimes to appear on television to denounce their former views.

A girl, who was approximately sixteen years old when arrested in November 1983 and whose detention lasted until April 1985, stated that when the authorities took her to Evin Prison for interrogation, “They blindfolded me and wrapped a blanket around my head until I could no longer see anything. Then the lashes began to tear the flesh of the soles of my feet. I fainted several times.”

A twenty-six-year-old female student, detained in prison between September 1981 and March 1982, described the first time she was beaten:

 

When I refused to confess, they blindfolded me and ordered me to lie on the ground. One of them began beating the soles of my feet with a cable. I was wearing socks, but the first blow was so painful that I jumped up and started running around the room. After that, they bound my hands behind my back, tied my legs after removing my socks, and covered my head with a blanket. Then they rained blows upon my back and feet, ordering me to confess the name of the political organisation I belonged to and the names of my political associates.

I do not know how long the beating lasted, but I pretended to faint from the intensity of the pain. Their response was to beat me more harshly, accusing me of trying to deceive them. When they finally stopped beating me, blood was flowing profusely from my feet, especially around the nails.

They said they were going to have lunch and left me sitting on a chair, but I was unable to stay still on it due to severe shaking. When I went to the toilet, there was blood in my urine. After they returned, I begged them to let me lie on the floor due to the intensity of my pain, but they did not permit me to do so.

 

After arriving at detention centres, detainees are often subjected to beating all over their bodies without discrimination. The beating may be accompanied by “soccer”, which is a technique intended to disorient the detainee and break his morale. The bound and blindfolded detainee is violently kicked from one guard to another while they rain blows upon him and shout insults.

A man who was arrested in Tehran in August 1982 told Amnesty International:

 

The Revolutionary Guard men handcuffed me with shackles that tightened whenever I moved my hands. They tied my hands behind my back in such a way that my arms formed two intersecting lines, with one stretched over the shoulder and the other under it. As a result, it felt as if my shoulders would dislocate and my collarbones would break. After that, they hung me by the shackles from a hook fixed in the wall, so that only the tips of my toes touched the ground. At first, of course, my toes bore some of my body’s weight to relieve the pressure on my wrists. But my feet had been beaten a while before and were swollen and very painful. After a while, fatigue gradually began to overcome my legs. My body relaxed and sagged, and the weight began to press on my shoulders.

 

Sexual Assaults

Former victims have provided Amnesty International with reports of various forms of sexual assault, including the rape of male and female prisoners since 1980. During their interviews with Amnesty International, some former prisoners experienced extreme distress when asked about the sexual assault they had endured, to the extent that they broke down and were unable to describe their suffering.

There are widely publicised reports of preadolescent female prisoners who were forced to enter into temporary marriage contracts with Revolutionary Guard men and were then raped on the night before their execution. Some former prisoners told Amnesty International that Revolutionary Guard men would boast about these acts in front of prisoners and threaten them by arranging marriages with their female relatives. Former prisoners, during their time in prison, lived in constant fear of such assaults.

 

Psychological Torture

11. Physical torture was often accompanied by threats of execution or even the carrying out of mock executions. Detainees were ordered to write their wills. They were then blindfolded and prepared for execution. After that, the guards were ordered to open fire, and shots were fired around the victim. A former prisoner described his suffering as follows:

 

The Revolutionary Guard took me to a yard where four wooden poles were planted in a semicircle. They tied each of us to a pole. The first among us was a boy of fourteen or fifteen years old who belonged to the Mojahedin-e-Khalq organisation. The second was an army officer. The third, about twenty-three years old, was a member of Peykar. I was the fourth. The guards had previously asked me if I had any other information. I had asked them to remove the blindfold from my eyes, so they didn’t blindfold me this time. I saw the bullet hit the boy. The officer was shot in his stomach. Perhaps the Peykar member had already died, because his body showed no reaction to the bullet impact. The boy was writhing from the effect of the bullet in his body. His hands were tied, and he was trying with all his strength to free himself. Blood was flowing profusely from his wound. I shouted at them, “What are you waiting for? Why don’t you shoot me?” They began to laugh. I couldn’t do anything. The boy finally died, and the officer remained silent, while I stood watching them continue. I try hard to erase this memory.

 

Other former prisoners have also given testimonies about the extensive psychological effects resulting from being forced to witness the execution of their fellow prisoners, and even to load their bodies onto trucks. A number of former prisoners also stated that they were threatened with the detention of their relatives, their rape, and their execution, unless they provided information.

Another witness, who had been arrested in Shiraz in early 1983, informed Amnesty International about a young female prisoner who was with him in prison during the same period. The guards told her that her husband had “disappeared due to his militancy” and that they would stop torturing him if she renounced her beliefs. When she refused, they took her to see her husband. She was shocked by his condition: he had lost most of his weight, his back was covered in repulsive, bloody sores, and the nails of his feet had been pulled out. The authorities executed her sometime later.

Severe psychological distress is not an unexpected outcome of such ill-treatment. Some prisoners stated in their accounts that mentally disturbed prisoners were deliberately placed in their cells to increase their anguish.

 

Solitary Confinement

12. Detainees are often held in solitary confinement for long periods. They know nothing of their fate and are deprived of contact with other prisoners or the outside world. Many describe losing touch with reality. Their eyes are blindfolded for extended periods, which intensifies their feelings of instability and vulnerability, especially while hearing the screams of other prisoners being tortured. A sense of humiliation and self-disgust is pervasive among prisoners in most reports.

A woman, approximately twenty years old, who had spent fourteen months in Evin Prison and Gohardasht Prison after the authorities failed to arrest her husband, said:

 

In Gohardasht Prison, not a minute passes without hearing the screams of some prisoners being tortured. You can sense the torture happening, just as you can sense the person in the adjacent cell being dragged out of it. The beating has no connection to interrogation; this is what makes Gohardasht so terrifying. Torture is merely a part of prison life.

Of the fourteen months I spent in prison, I spent nine in solitary confinement—either in the literal sense of the word, or in cells designated for one individual but where two or three people were deposited. During those months, I was not allowed any contact with the outside world, any reading material, or anything else. During that period, I tried to occupy and care for myself and to maintain my composure, because I felt I was under pressure and was gradually beginning to lose my mental balance. I constantly imagined strange things, like images in my mind. I felt that everyone around me were informants. I even imagined that I saw my husband and that he was being interrogated, and that my young son was also being interrogated.

 

Medical Care

13. Victims of torture are deprived of receiving medical treatment for their injuries. As stated in a typical account by a former prisoner, “There usually was no medical treatment whatsoever after torture. They simply return you to your cell and abandon you to your fate. Other prisoners might care for you, as some of them may have knowledge of first aid. Also, some prisoners secretly hoard medicines for emergencies.”

According to information from Amnesty International, prisoners do not undergo medical examination upon their arrival at prison. Moreover, even basic medical care means are often lacking. Some prisons do not have a qualified doctor of their own, so treatment is provided by medical students or doctors who are themselves prisoners, or by guards who have received only basic first aid training. In some cases, a prisoner’s transfer to a hospital for necessary specialised treatment is either refused or significantly delayed.

Poor hygiene and inadequate sanitary facilities in prisons, combined with severe overcrowding, have led to the spread of skin diseases. Many former prisoners have complained of kidney pain they suffered as a result of beatings, for which they received no treatment. Torture wounds often became infected, painful, and foul-smelling due to unsanitary conditions and lack of medical care.

 

NEXT⇒ Conclusion

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^[1]  Not everything said by media outlets is false. If we were to concede to this premise, the facts would be obliterated, and knowledge would no longer have any value. Indeed, mutawatir (mass-transmitted) reports are sound even if their transmitters are disbelievers.

^[2]  Surah al Isra’: 43.

^[3]  This is the Khomeinist method of execution. The moment a prisoner is summoned, he understands that he will be killed. He may be innocent or the charge attributed to him may not have deserved imprisonment in the first place. The most vile and criminal act is that they inform the prisoner that he has been sentenced to death. He is brought forth, placed in the spot designated for this purpose, and they open fire. Then it becomes clear to the wretch that they were conducting a psychological experiment on him, and they return him to his cell.

^[4]  Surah al Nur: 16.

^[5]  This is what the brother, nay, the brothers who were imprisoned say, “Not a single night passed without an execution.” And this happens in one of the prisons of Kurdistan. What must the situation be like in the prisons of Tehran and other cities?

^[6]  In addition to what the brothers mentioned about the rape of a virgin before her execution, Amnesty International has spoken about this recurring crime, and its mention has reached the level of being recurrently transmitted from the tongues of those who fled Iran. And those who spoke so much about the oppression of the Shah forgot these injustices when rule fell into their hands and did what the “devils and others” were incapable of doing. Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala will certainly exact vengeance from them and He will destroy their plans just as they destroy the plans of the people.

^[7]  Most of our brothers have ceased speaking about humanity such as their saying, “For a man who possesses a share of humanity to issue this action,” whereas before they used to speak about the followers of the Ayatollahs by contrasting their actions with Islam. Perhaps they understood from the prison experience that those who revile the Sahabah radiya Llahu ‘anhum and accuse the Mother of the Believers of that from which Allah subhanahu wa ta ‘ala has absolved her by the explicit text of the Qur’an cannot possibly be Muslims, so they began addressing them in terms of humanity. But where is the humanity in them?

^[8]  Evin Prison, dated 1981-1982.

^[9]  From the testimony of a woman detained in Evin and Gohardasht Prisons from November 1983 until early 1984.

^[10]  The Organization of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, or simply Peykar, also known by the earlier name Marxist Mojahedin, was a splinter group from the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Members associated with it declared that they no longer self-identify as Muslims but rather believe in Marxism–Leninism.

^[11]  From the testimony of a man arrested in 1981.