Читать книгу A State of Fear - My 10 Years Inside Iran's Torture Jails - Dr Reza Ghaffari - Страница 8

I could hear a terrible sound. As I stepped into the open prison yard, I realised what it was: the sound of torture. Once you hear those screams they stay with you forever. They penetrated the walls and echoed down the corridors and inside my skull. I can still hear those echoes today. I particularly remember the sickening sound of a woman screaming out for help. These hellish sounds grew louder and more piercing as we ventured inside.

I was hurried along a long corridor. As we came to some steps I stumbled and fell to my knees, almost smashing my head on the ground. A guard grabbed my sleeve and pulled me back on my feet. I already knew why he had grabbed my sleeve rather than my arm: I was considered ‘untouchable’ by my devout captors. Further inside the prison I hit my forehead against what must have been a low ceiling. It made a sickening, dull thud and I collapsed for a second time.

This corridor was the narrow gate to hell. Every ‘untouchable’ would have walked along it. Every prisoner would have fallen on that step and hit their head on that ceiling. This journey was a blunt and somehow fitting introduction to a world of psychological disorientation. We came to a room and I was pushed down into a chair. I could just make out a simple desk standing in front of me. I heard men filing in.

‘We’ve captured all of you bastards now,’ someone said. ‘You can die together.’

‘Brother Rahman, hand him to me,’ another of them shouted. ‘I’ll send him straight to hell.’

They began incessantly cursing me and members of my family. It almost sounded like an incantation, a ritual they repeated for every new prisoner. I tried to convince myself that these taunts were the punishment, but inside I knew that they were just psyching themselves up before they began. Eventually, it started.

‘Tell me, which organisation do you belong to?’

‘Brother, there has been a mistake. I’m not a member of any organisation.’ I was in fact a member of an underground workers’ organisation called Rahe Kargar, which literally means ‘Workers’ Way’. Trades unions were banned, so secret cells of Rahe Kargar sprang up around the country.

He struck the back of my neck with the edge of his hand. It was followed by a wild flurry of punches to my head and face.

I was taken to an adjoining room. Still reeling from this initial beating, I was pushed into a corner. I was so close to the walls that I could feel the concrete against my nose. With my eyes still covered, I was now seriously disorientated. I tried to keep calm and not think about what was going to happen next. It emerged that I did not have to wait long to find out.

Something struck from behind – not a fist, it was far too powerful for that – and my face and chest smashed against the walls in the corner where I stood. Badly winded and unable to breathe, I collapsed to my knees. I desperately fought for air but, like a fish on a slate, I was helpless. It was agony, like sharp bolts of electricity were being passed through my body. Someone tried to pull me to my feet but my legs wouldn’t support me.

Once my system allowed me to swallow air again I saw, through the small slit above my blindfold, what had hit me. It was swinging from the ceiling and looked a bit like a punch bag, but bigger and filled with gravel. It was about a half a metre in diameter and a metre in length. When it slammed into you it felt like a train. While I was still on my knees, a heavy boot of one of the Hezbollahi delivered a swift kick to my head, then another to my back. The man grabbed my hand, pulled me up, and I was dragged, staggering and breathless, to another room.

From beneath my blindfold I saw the feet of my torturers. From what I could make out there were at least four men in the room with me. I also saw an iron bed frame, covered with what would have been a mattress if it wasn’t made of wood. They forced me onto it, face down.

One interrogator sat on my back, firmly placed a hand on the back of my head and forced my face into the wooden board. Two others strapped my ankles to the crosspiece of the frame and my wrists to the top. My arms were stretched out straight. Then they began their ‘holy duty’, lashing the soles of my feet with a length of thick, insulated cable. The pain was indescribable. It tore through every inch of me. I screamed like never before, all the while anger growing inside me. The guard on my back only pushed down harder, grinding my face into the wood. As the flogging intensified, so did my screams. One of the men pushed torn pieces of blanket covered with dirt, blood, dust and hair into my mouth to gag me.

Throughout the ordeal the interrogator demanded names, times, places and houses of my ‘comrades’. He was fixated on the times and places of alleged secret meetings. I couldn’t have answered even if I had wanted to; with my mouth stuffed with rags it was difficult to breathe, let alone speak. The pain from the lashing was almost obscured by the feeling of blind panic that I was going to choke to death. Focusing what little energy I had, I was able to dislodge the rags in my mouth. They were trying to break me mentally as well as physically, claiming they knew the time and place of a certain meeting and demanded that I confirm it. I knew they were bluffing. What they really expected from me was detailed information leading to the capture and arrest of my comrades. Mercifully, I passed out.

My body was covered with a cold sweat. It felt like I had been soaked in icy water. From under the blindfold I could see a narrow beam of light shining through a hole in the door of the torture room. The rags had been removed from my mouth. The chief interrogator told me that Haji Aghah – a priest and representative of the Ayatollah Khomeini in the prisons – gave him written permission to torture me to death.

‘Now, what are you going to do? Do you talk, or should I ask our brothers to make you talk? We have forced central committee members to talk. Do you want to be a hero? You’re a fool. No hero will emerge from this cell alive. Do you know where we’ll take your corpse? To a cursed hole where dogs will tear you apart.’

‘Brother,’ I said, sobbing, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini that you have made a mistake, I know nothing about these names and addresses.’

The chief interrogator and two others took the straps off and sat me up on the bed, still blindfolded, so that I was facing the door. I heard more people entering the room and four more boots appeared on the ground, along with someone wearing plastic prison slippers. I assumed he was another prisoner, but had no idea who he was. The chief interrogator spoke again. ‘Farhad, take off your blindfold and tell us who this man sitting on the bed is.’

With some hesitation, the prisoner said, ‘He is Karveh, a lecturer at the University of Tehran.’ Karveh was the secret underground name I was known by for 20 years and more while in the Rahe Kargar movement. He gave a list of names of people supposedly working under me and recited a statement that had obviously been dictated by prison officials: ‘My wife and I have both been captured. Our organisation has been attacked at the very top. We have given the brothers all the information that we have. You should do the same, otherwise you and your family will be destroyed.’

Farhad. I knew that name well. And that voice was familiar, too… it was that of a cadre in Rahe Kargar. It took me a second to place him as he sounded different, broken and desolate. It was a tone that I had never heard before, although I now understood the reason for it. I was aware that anyone I said I knew would share my fate. A name would mean a death. I would be helping to destroy the struggle of which I was a part; the struggle for workers’ rights. Workers had no right of association, unions or bargaining power and it’s the same now. Rahe Kargar was helping to organise secret cells inside factories to fight for these rights. There was only one way to respond.

‘Why are you lying?’ I said, furiously. ‘Who are these people you are talking about? Why are you accusing me of having contact with them? Have you ever introduced any of them to me? I have never met any of these people.’

‘You are lying,’ the interrogator snapped. A fist connected squarely with my head. I heard Farhad being taken away. The torture was about to begin again. From under the blindfold, I glimpsed a deep pile of dried scraps of flesh and pools of blood. The macabre remains of those who had been tortured before me, who had died or were imprisoned in this hellhole. I knew that some of these ‘untouchables’ would have been no more than children: only 12 years old, boys and girls. Some would have been as old as 80. Yet the flesh was not so much revolting as inspiring: a testimony to those who, in the name of justice, had refused to break.

‘I must make a decision,’ I thought. ‘Should I give up all the values of democracy, freedom and justice that I have held for so long? Or should my blood join that of the others who resisted and remained firm in their commitment?’ I knew then that I would not jeopardise the lives or activities of my comrades. I would not be helping myself even if I did talk. Anyone brought in because of my confession would only be tortured until they produced more evidence against me. But would my silence protect me? Perhaps. Only if Farhad had not disclosed anything else about me and no other comrades from our organisation – especially those from the Rahe Kargar newspaper – were arrested.

The interrogators worked for Savama, the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. This was the secret police and they were experienced. Some had been employed in the time of the Shah and when he was overthrown in the Islamic revolution of 1979 they discovered their skills were still much in demand. The one the others called Haji Rahman shouted at me: ‘Motherfucker, we caught you red-handed in one big net. We’ll hang you all.’

‘Give this motherfucker to me,’ screamed another. ‘I will kill him and send him to hell right now.’

‘Hey, let’s hear from your own fucking mouth which counter-revolutionary group you belong to,’ said one more.

‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini, there is a mistake here. I have never been a member of any organisation.’

Someone punched me again. Haji Rahman shouted, ‘I swear by Imam Khomeini’s glorious spirit that if any of the information is withheld and if any of them get away, I will kill you with my own hands.’

‘We don’t just want details of your underground activities, we need passwords too.’

‘I swear I have no information or passwords to give!’

‘We won’t let you out of here alive. We have no time for heroes,’ Haji Rahman said. ‘Brothers, teach him how to talk.’

The torture began. With each blow I screamed clear and loud. I blacked out and awoke to find myself in an infirmary, tubes attached to my body. The doctor – a prisoner from the Blaoch region – came to my bedside when he saw that my eyes were open. ‘God has had mercy upon you. You have had a stroke due to the trauma to your head. You’ve been unconscious for three days, very close to death. The right side of your body has been affected.’

My first thought was that they could not push me further. I was relieved. They didn’t want to kill me… not yet, anyway. I was in the infirmary for days. I began to feel a little better and my wounds began to heal but I knew that it was only a matter of time before the interrogators returned. They still wanted information. Sure enough, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, the one they called Haji Samad, the chief interrogator, returned me to the cells. ‘The original information we wanted from you is useless. All the meetings will have taken place by now, and they’ll know that we have you,’ he said coldly. He threatened to take me to Lanat-Abad, the infamous mass graves for communist victims, where he would finish me ‘with one shot’.

‘Haji,’ I cried, ‘I beg you to kill me. What you’ve done to me is unbearable. I’m blind in my right eye, my right arm and foot have lost their power to move, my feet are covered in scabs and open sores. My bladder is bleeding and my urine is full of blood. Living like this is worthless. Kill me then I’ll feel relief from the pain and wounds you’ve inflicted on me. At least I know I’ll be remembered by our people for resisting.’

‘You think the people support you?’ he scoffed. ‘You’re nothing. All of our people are Hezbollah. They despise you. If we handed you to them they’d tear you apart.’ He removed the blindfold and handed me a pen and stack of paper with a list of questions. ‘Answer all these questions and anything else you know. I’ll be back.’

It was not until around midnight, nine hours later, that an interrogator entered and asked me if I had finished writing. ‘No,’ I replied, taking the opportunity to add, ‘My medicine is still in the infirmary. I have to take it every three hours. Now nine have passed. Would you please take me to the infirmary?’

He reluctantly agreed and, after reapplying the blindfold, led me away.

Every two or three days, Haji Samad or another of the interrogators would demand information. One day, while I was sitting on that now familiar bed frame, a Hezbollahi came over and whispered in my ear. He knew my name and talked about where I used to work. ‘I know you weren’t a bad guy,’ he said, ‘but I warn you, if you don’t co-operate, you won’t get out of here alive.’

I never saw that man again. Or if I did, I was not aware of it. But then I never actually saw the faces of my interrogators, as my time with them was spent blindfolded and turned against the cold prison walls. Not long after that strange encounter the Hezbollahis tried a new approach. I was taken to the torture rooms as usual, then Haji Samad entered with two others. ‘The information you’ve given us is rubbish,’ he said. ‘Are you going to tell us what we need to know, or not?’

‘Haji,’ I replied, ‘you have all the information I’ve got.’

‘Hang him from the meat hook.’ he ordered, ‘and keep him there until he’s more talkative.’

The two men bound my wrists together behind my back with one elbow behind my head pointing up and the other pointing downwards. They picked me up and hung my wrists over a meat hook fastened to the ceiling. My entire body weight was now supported by my shoulder joints at an agonising angle and my toes barely scraped the floor. Ribs, spine and shoulder joints were instantly put under enormous stress. This is a form of crucifixion and it severely restricts breathing. I could only prevent asphyxiation by making my legs rigid and standing on tiptoes. But I couldn’t take this forced position for long and my legs soon started shaking with exhaustion. I was forced to take the stress back on my chest and shoulders. I alternated from one agonising position to the other. They took me off the hook for short periods, during which I was fed and taken to the toilet.

This torture is known as ghapani after the system used to weigh lamb carcasses. It was used as far back as the Shah’s reign and many of the unfortunates who are hung up in this way would lose all sensitivity around their shoulders. They are left with great pain in their neck and back which persists for years. My own time on the ghapani only ended because I could no longer be kept conscious long enough to be tortured. On the third day the stress on my body caused my left collar bone to snap. I screamed in agony, again and again. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. At last I couldn’t get any more air into my lungs and, thankfully, passed out.

The Hezbollahis had at last seen there was little point in probing my immediate political activities and moved onto broader issues. ‘We understand you teach at the university.’

‘That is correct.’

‘There are lots of pretty girls there. Did you have sex with them?’

‘My job is to educate our youth. It’s to enrich our country through its people. It pays peanuts for what it is but it’s a job I’m honoured to do. When I enter a lecture room, it’s like entering a mosque. The youth before me are like a congregation to whom I have responsibility, every bit as strong as to my own children. I have a part in moulding our people’s future for the better in what I can teach. Do you think I’d abuse that? If you need a straighter answer than that for your records: no, I don’t sleep with them.’

It was important to give an unambiguously negative answer to this line of questioning as unapproved sexual relations in Iran can be punishable by death. They changed tack. Had I smoked dope? Tried opium? Drank alcohol? All carried heavy sentences and every prisoner was asked these questions. Extensive background enquiries would be made in which the authorities would look at intelligence computer files dating back to the time of the Shah.

If anything, my interrogators were less interested in political questions than they were in morality. They were obsessed with the sexual habits of all us prisoners. One 75-year-old woman that I spoke to was pressed to confess the misdemeanours of her youth to the eager listeners. They got a licentious kick from forcing our peccadilloes from us.

The various lines of questioning seemed to go on without end. How long had I been here? It was difficult to tell, but I reckoned about three months. Three months… and already I was a wreck. During the rare moments of peace, I thought of my wife and children, wondered what had happened to them and tried to recall the events leading up to my arrest.

The Hezbollahi first raided my home some two months before I was eventually taken away. My family were sitting on the floor, enjoying the evening meal and watching one of Ayatollah Khomeini’s speeches on television (an attack on ‘leftist stooges of American imperialism’, I think). Aunty went to see who it was. Before the lock was properly off the latch, the door was flung open, trapping her against the wall. There was a clatter of boots. One man began shouting orders.

I was taken to my study by two armed guards, the older of the two clearly the leader. He started firing questions at me, making notes of my answers. The questions were textbook secret police: ‘What’s your contact with the left, counter-revolutionary organisations?’; ‘Are you a member or sympathiser?’; ‘Do you know anyone who is?’; ‘Have you ever read their papers?’ I was also asked broader questions about what I thought about the nature of the Islamic regime and the war with Iraq.

While I played safe with non-committal answers, the younger man began rifling through my bookshelves and the notes I prepared for the following day’s lectures while others ransacked the rest of the house. As the search proceeded their disappointment became evident. Someone had obviously led them to believe that this was a safe house, brimming with wanted activists from clandestine organisations and everything from left-wing pamphlets to missile launchers. They were not in luck.

This was early 1981, a period marked by regular clashes in the streets that frequently led to the indiscriminate killing of demonstrators. Raids on private houses were commonplace and I had taken the precaution of getting rid of anything that could be deemed counter-revolutionary. On the wall of my study there had once been posters supporting workers’ rights and the Kurdish national struggle. There was now a banner supporting the taking of American hostages in the US embassy in Tehran. I had made a small bonfire on the roof several days earlier and ashes were all that remained of my piles of left-wing pamphlets, papers and books. It had not been easy to burn 15 years of agitation, propaganda and debate.

The police finally gave up at 11pm. According to their warrant they were looking for material linking me to specific organisations; a printing machine, and evidence that the flat was used as a safe house. Instead, they found a family sitting down to tea, watching Khomeini on television. The oldest Hezbollahi went outside to radio in his report and wait for instructions before the police finally left with the house a mess – but still standing. After my arrest the whole house – and some of the homes of my relatives – would be stripped bare. This was common. Confiscating ‘evidence’ – which included everything from money and jewellery to TVs, stereos and cars – and selling it on was highly profitable.

The oldest raider turned to me as they left and said, ‘We’re sorry about this, brother. Our information is normally accurate. After all, it was one of your relatives we heard it from.’ It was certainly an inconvenience but it was also a warning that my name was on the Hezbollahi’s list. I told comrades from my organisation not to come to the house. I was torn: should I flee the country or await arrest? I decided to sit tight and see what would happen. Back then I thought that going to prison for my political convictions at this time was the right thing to do. Sitting in my cell, looking back, it seemed like a very long time ago. A different world.

I still had no idea which prison I was in, but I guessed it was the country’s main interrogation centre, known as Evin. I was mistaken. I found out about four months later that I had been held in Komiteh Moshterak (Centre for the Committee of Anti-Subversive Activities). It had been established by the Shah’s Savak – which was later replaced by the Savama – as a special complex for the interrogation of political dissidents. The majority of its inmates were members of the Fedayeen and Mojahedin, the two guerrilla organisations fighting against the Shah. Under the new regime Komiteh Moshterak and other prisons continued to exact a terrible revenge on political prisoners. Reports filtered out that made the persecution of political prisoners under the Shah look tame by comparison.

Komiteh Moshterak had been built by the last Shah’s father, Reza Shah and it once held hundreds of fighters for freedom, democracy and socialism. Although prisoners were allowed deliveries of home-cooked food, conditions were generally far from humane. A revolutionary poet named Farokhi was put to death by having air injected into a vein. His executioner was Pezeshk Ahmadi, a veterinary appointed the position of prison doctor. The Shah’s father also imprisoned those responsible for establishing the Group of 53, the first communist party of Iran.

Just as they did with almost everything else in Iran, Khomeini’s regime Islamicised the names of the prisons. Mine became known as The Centre for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. It was supposed to hold a hundred maximum security prisoners at a time but now packed in around 2,500. They occupied every conceivable space available: lavatories, yards, balconies of upper floors and hallways. There were queues everywhere. Prisoners lined the corridors. On each side of every passageway they laid head to foot, blindfolded and facing the wall. I lay like this for a period of four months, only moving to be taken for torture and interrogation or to the bathroom. On these breaks we would be taken, perhaps ten at a time, and given one or two minutes despite there being only three or four cubicles. This happened three times a day, once after each meal. If we had time and could get to one of the sinks, we could use this short visit for washing dishes, hands, faces, and even our prison uniform.

As long as a prisoner was under intense interrogation, he or she would be kept inside the torture room and witness others being tortured or outside waiting their turn or in the yard adjoining the torture block. Those who survived with terrible wounds would be taken to the cramped, crowded hallways or balconies. If they were lucky, they might end up on a more spacious corridor if other prisoners were taken away to other jails – or taken away to be shot. There was absolutely no information – written or otherwise – from the outside world and communication between prisoners was risky. Once I was approached by a man who stood behind me and whispered in my ear.

‘Would you like to read the Koran?’

‘Brother, I can’t read Arabic.’

‘I can help you to read it,’ he said.

‘I’m bleeding internally. I can’t keep my mind focused.’

‘Those who have not repented,’ he hissed, ‘will be wiped out from the face of this earth!’ With this sweet thought he departed, thankfully never to be encountered again.

It was during a break, after six months of imprisonment, that I first discovered where I was being held. Usually the guards hurried us along, but on this occasion we were left to ourselves. A young man called Adel helped me get onto his shoulders so I could look through a small window. I immediately recognised the main communications tower in central Tehran and, from this, we figured out where we were.

We were permitted a quick shower only every two or three weeks. First the prisoners in the so-called ‘solitary’ cells were taken. After they had been it was the turn of those in the corridors, balconies and hallways. Each prisoner was given a piece of black, dried-out, stony soap. Between three to five prisoners would huddle under each of the five showerheads. The shower also served as a laundry and we would wash our uniforms as best we could. Under the showers we could take our blindfolds off, allowing a rare chance to see the faces of our fellow prisoners. In truth, these were my happiest moments in prison. Of course, the guards were always watching, making sure that we did not try and communicate. When 20 minutes were up, we would put on our dripping clothes and leave.

Mealtimes were not so much of a relief. We ate every eight hours, sitting down facing the wall and remained blindfolded. The prison food was tasteless, colourless and meagre. The heat was sometimes unbearable – the temperature can hit 44 degrees celsius in Tehran – and the thick grey walls were dank from sweat. Cigarettes were, of course, not permitted although we were given one cup of what resembled tea every 24 hours. This was between three and five o’clock in the morning, depending on the time of morning prayer. The yellow and foul-smelling drink was accompanied by between two and four cubes of sugar to last the whole day.

The prison had only one doctor, himself a prisoner, and once a week he was allowed to administer nothing more powerful than painkillers under the watchful eyes of the guards. Any smile or kind word would lead to severe repercussions. Prisoners in great pain would have to plead for medicine but unless they were dying the guards would often stop the doctor. ‘We need the medicine for the Islamic devotees fighting a holy war against Iraq,’ they would say.

Many prisoners had vicious wounds on the soles of their feet and contracted infections so severe that some of them died. Others were bleeding and in constant pain from broken bones. A few had even lost their sight in one eye. There were few who did not have some form of skin infection. Unsurprisingly, there was an ever-present stench from untreated wounds. Some of my fellow prisoners caught severe fevers, chest infections and tuberculosis. Lice were everywhere.

The warmth of the sun, the smell of trees, the stars at night… all were distant memories. Each of our movements was calculated to form part of our torture. You might think that going to the bathroom would bring some relief to the prisoner who had been lying on a floor, blindfolded, facing the wall for ten hours. But not when one had to urinate or defecate in a matter of minutes surrounded by people in severe pain, many bleeding. I had blood in my urine for a long time. Others were affected by stomach disorders and needed more time than we were allowed.

All our activities were accompanied by an orchestra of horrifying noises. The most disturbing was the sound of cars stopping at the entrance late at night and in the early morning. They were bringing more victims. The main door would screech open and, within ten or twenty minutes, the prison would be filled with the chilling sound of someone experiencing the torture room for the first time. Each scream reminded me of the torture I experienced. It was impossible to block that sound out, let alone sleep through it. Listening to others being tortured was more demoralising for us than experiencing it personally.

Then there was the prison tannoy system. The authorities subjected prisoners to a constant barrage of readings from the Koran and other religious texts. They relayed speeches by leading clerics and government officials, from Khomeini downwards. Sometimes they played military marches or entreaties to support the regime’s war with Iraq, accompanied by constant bulletins crowing about the defeat of Iraqi forces and the supposed advance along the road to Baghdad and Jerusalem. Guards ran down the corridors while the reports blared, kicking us in the back indiscriminately and shouting, ‘You have turned your backs on God, Islam and Khomeini! You must repent or die!’ Some guards had themselves come from the frontline and were shell-shocked and unhinged. They were deliberately chosen to ‘guard’ their enemy. Mainly young, illiterate peasants, they were fooled into accepting the hell of the here and now by the promise of the next world.

There were just three sounds that were welcome: the food trolley, birdsong – a rarity in this urban prison – and the whirr of the overhead fans. I would breathe a sigh of relief when I heard one of those old fans spinning, heralding a much-needed breeze.

We never knew how long we had before torture began again. Day and night the guards would go back and forth, picking on prisoners. We were kept in a state of fear; a blow from a fist, clubs or boot could come at any time. You could be beaten for anything: putting your hands over your head, scratching your nose, touching your blindfold. An attack frequently resulted in bleeding ears, eyes and noses, or broken teeth and jaws.

On one occasion after torture I was taken back to the corridor where I was ordered to lie down. I was exhausted. My feet were bleeding and I was completely unable to hold myself up. No sooner had the guards bundled me into a corner than a boot smashed into my back.

‘Leave me alone!’ I screamed. ‘Let me die!’

‘You son of a bitch!’ the guard yelled back. ‘You’re trying to identify me by looking underneath your blindfold! I’ll kill you!’

‘Why have you attacked me?’

I was too drained to even think. I knew this guard, and had suffered at his hands before. He was universally feared. As he was shouting at me, a religious figure who was one of the prison directors was passing by. He stepped in.

‘Haji Johary [the guard] has lost four of his children fighting the Great Satan [America],’ the director said. ‘Two of them in Kurdistan fighting the communists, the other two were just 14 and 16 when they gave their lives on the front against Iraq. Haji Johary himself continuously visits the front, where he is directing groups of Khomeini fedais. He lost his dearest brother during one such operation and was himself injured in an explosion.

‘We’re fighting America and Israel, and you counter-revolutionaries say that the Islamic Republic is importing guns and ammunition from them! Our great Imam and his children the Hezbollahis are fighting against American imperialism and Soviet atheists and communists and you accuse us of trading oil for guns with them! You had better open your eyes and ears. This war is not against Iraq but, as Imam Khomeini has said, against the superpowers and that is the secret of the holy war which is being supervised by the Imam on Allah’s behalf. That’s the important point that you unbelievers have missed.

‘Our brother Haji Johary is still carrying shrapnel fragments from the Iraqi missile that hit his bunker. It has affected his mental balance. When he gets angry with you, he cannot control himself. Haji Johary is the ears and eyes of the great Khomeini here.’

I made no response and my wounds went untreated as normal. Like all of the political prisoners who populated the corridors, I made almost no contact with my neighbours. At most, you could glance under your blindfold at those lying either side of you, or count the feet of those passing by on their way to the showers or the bathroom. But trying to distinguish your comrades from the guards and torturers by their shoes was dangerous. Some guards would sneak up on us wearing black plastic prison sandals. At night, when there were fewer guards moving back and forth, it was a little easier to see comrades lying across from you.

If the hands and feet of the man next to you were not bruised or bleeding, you were suspicious. This mistrust was necessary as you had to identify those you could trust. An index of this was how many wounds they bore. This told you how resilient they had been under torture. A man with smooth hands had been no trouble for the torturer.

It did not take long for me to decide that I needed to keep my mind active. I organised court proceedings in my head, in which I was the defendant. Each day I would present a very strong clear defence of freedom, democracy and social justice, explaining my reasons for participating in political activity and my struggle against the Islamic Republic. I repeated these court proceedings and each time I made them longer, until I fell asleep. But before long the cries of someone being tortured, my own pain, or a kick from a guard, would wake me.

Another pastime was following beams of light shining underneath cell doors late at night or rays of the sun glimmering through the doors to the balcony. But these distractions could do nothing to alleviate the mental effects of imprisonment and there can be no surprise in learning that in my corridor alone, some prisoners lost their minds completely. Their madness compounded the horror with their wailing, their banging of their heads against the walls, their tearing at their blindfolds, their cries for their mothers and fathers or their curses of Khomeini, God and Islam.

After about five months I was moved to what was called a solitary cell on the fourth floor. I pulled off my blindfold, expecting to find myself alone in a dark cell. But this three-by-three metre cell already contained more than 15 other prisoners. They sat, backs to the wall with their feet stretched out. After the soul-destroying isolation of the corridors, it almost felt like returning home to find a welcome party had been organised. But there were still drawbacks to life here. We frequently weren’t even given the chance to use the lavatory and we would have to use a plastic bag in the corner of the cell.

The inmates moved around to make room for me to sit and the introductions began. As I was clearly injured – the wounds on my feet were quite visible – I was given the best position. Once my back was propped up in a corner I was handed some blankets. I was given some biscuits that came from the families of prisoners who had been in the cell for over a year.

I was asked for my story and what I was charged with. I was wary in case there were any collaborators among my new cell mates. Some of them had not been tortured, though they were clearly shocked by my condition. I told them what I knew and I had some questions of my own. It emerged that ten of my cellmates were accused of membership of the Tudeh (Party of the Masses, a communist organisation). Five were there as a result of association with other left organisations: Rahe Kargar, Fedayeen Minority and Peykar (a Maoist organisation). There was also a young man from Kurdistan who was a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. He had been accused of infiltration and treason and had been in the cell for around two years. He couldn’t have been more than 20 years old. His beard was long and matted, and his face so pale and grey that it appeared that there was no blood in his veins. I was told that he continued to protest his innocence with unshakeable faith in the regime. Like so many of us, he was being held indefinitely without trial. He constantly exercised in his corner of the cell and made little effort to interact with the rest of us.

The ten Tudeh members had been captured through information given by their own leadership. General secretary Nooredin Kianoori announced the dissolution of the party on his own arrest and told members to give themselves up. Many did hand themselves over to Islamic prosecutors in Evin, Komiteh, or elsewhere. The party surrendered its membership lists with details of its structure throughout the country. In my cell the former Tudeh members had consensus on three points. Firstly, that the war with Iraq had been imposed on the regime by an imperialist conspiracy. Secondly, the regime was genuinely anti-imperialist. And thirdly, that it enjoyed mass popular support.

None of these ten men had been tortured… not yet, at least. They were mostly middle-class university students or professionals and I listened to their stories with great interest. Parvis used to work for an Iranian television station; Adel Zahmatkesh was a fourth-year dental student at the university of Tehran and had been Kianoori’s personal chauffeur for a time; another student, Mohsen, had been in his fourth year on an engineering degree; Shafagh was a doctor who told me that he had run a successful practice before he was arrested.

Parvis was adamant in his support for the regime’s war against Iraq, its genocidal policy against the Kurds, and the annihilation of left wing opposition – which stuck me as bizarre, since he himself was a victim of this. ‘If Imam Khomeini’s line is really a revolutionary one, why is it that the Islamic regime has arrested hundreds of thousands of the democratic and revolutionary forces, and killed and destroyed tens of thousands of them?’ I asked.

‘You people deserve what you get!’ said Parvis. ‘You have risen up against a popular revolutionary and anti-imperialist regime which is also an ally of the Soviet Union. Your politics does not support our people or any revolutionary cause – it only serves the interests of American imperialism.’ We hunched together for such discussions, speaking in hushed voices. Our exchanges became sharper rather than louder and other cellmates shuffled closer to hear. Tudeh members supported Parvis with their contributions. The others listened too, nodding and grunting as we spoke. They were more hesitant about expressing their own opinions, perhaps because they were more conscious of the danger we were in. The pro-Khomeini Tudeh members were, after all, an unknown quantity.

‘What about the genocide against minorities: the Kurds, the Bah’ais? The suppression of freedom and civil liberties? The subjugation of women under the veil?’ I asked.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘who are those women who came out and demonstrated against the Islamic government? Prostitutes, monarchists and those who sought sexual self-gratification. As for the Kurds and the Baha’is, the leaderships of these movements are part of the American imperialist conspiracy against the Islamic regime. The suppression of civil liberties is only a problem for a handful of intellectuals. The workers and peasants in the factories and fields throughout the country are concerned with improving their condition. The Islamic revolution works for their well-being. You oppositionalists are frustrating this process.’

I had heard these arguments before. Some of the academic staff at the university of Tehran who belonged to the Fedayeen Majority had replied in exactly the same way. Not even the brutality of this regime shook them out of their fantasy. ‘How can a regime that has obtained weapons from America and Israel and their allies for use in the war with Iraq and the civil war against the democratic forces be described as a revolutionary regime?’ I said.

‘The Chinese received US aid against Japan in World War II. That did not make China counter-revolutionary.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘but how can the regime be improving material conditions? It has wiped out the workers’ councils which arose from the revolutionary overthrow of the Shah. Millions of hectares of land were liberated when the Shah was overthrown. Now they are being confiscated by the Pasdars and given back to feudal landlords.’

He answered, ‘The Islamic shoras [people’s councils] are the revolutionary answer to independent organisations. Anyway, they were being used as counter-revolutionary bases against the Islamic regime by the left. The Islamic regime will develop its own land reform programme which will lead to the orderly handing over of land to the peasants.’ I ended our discussion. I could not yet trust everyone in the cell and, more importantly, I could tell that there was no way that he would see reality.

Adel, the dental student, was a young man with tremendous energy and vitality. By contrast with Parvis his own defence of the regime had become more qualified since his arrest. He was the one on whose shoulders I stood to look out of the window when we went to the bathroom. Now I knew where we were being held. I would have been more wary of this offer had it come from any other prisoner. None of the other Tudeh prisoners would have taken a risk like that.

Adel maintained a good relationship with all other left-leaning prisoners. His dental training came to good use too and he was always willing to examine the teeth of other prisoners, irrespective of their politics. A passionate figure, he participated in unified prison resistance movements and was killed in a mass execution of political prisoners in 1989. Parvis, on the other hand, refused to take part, even when other Tudeh members were involved. I later learned from some of the prisoners that served with him in Evin that he had been accused of co-operating with prison officials. I saw him again in another prison in 1987 and was warned to keep well clear. But we shared a history and I tried to maintain a cordial relationship. Whether he actually co-operated with the authorities or not, he also went to the gallows in 1989.

There was solidarity between the other four leftists in my cell. They, like me, strongly opposed the regime. None of them could have been described as middle class and they had all been tortured. Taregh, one of the two Fedayeen Minority members, was a high school student and only 16 years old. He was the most energetic of the four. Morad, the other Fedayeen, was a school teacher arrested after being informed on by Islamic students – ‘the ears and eyes of Khomeini’. Ahmed was a worker from a factory in Karaj, an industrial city about 40 miles outside Tehran. He had been arrested as a result of a strike in his factory and was a member of Peykar. The fourth, Kaveh, was a member of Rahe Kargar and had been arrested due to his political work at a car plant. All kept their distance from their Tudeh cellmates.

Open political arguments were dangerous, but I couldn’t stop myself from chipping in with references to the defeat of the 1979 revolution or to the nature of the regime. Yet there was little point. Everyone had very set positions in order to protect themselves.