Part 1: At the start of the Iranian election/post-election
Part 2: As the protests continued…
Part 3: The unimaginable torture…
Part 4: When things got more violent…
Part 5: June 24th - “The Day of the Axes”
There was going to be a gathering at a cemetery in Tehran to commemorate the deaths of the people that have been killed in the protests. It was going to be a peaceful gathering, and wasn’t supposed to turn into a protest. Mousavi was going to seek an OK from the government for the gathering. The Interior Ministry refused to issue a permit for the gatherings. Everyone I knew that was going wasn’t surprised and was all going to show up anyway, especially myself and other people who lost someone in the protests. The gatherings were still planned anyway. I heard that day that even Mousavi and some of the other reformist leaders were going to visit the graves of the protests to also pay their respects to those people. I went to it anyway and was arrested, along with a lot of other people that day.
The only thing that could be described after that when I was arrested and was detained was going to be my three days of feeling like I was in hell. I thought the torture from the first time was bad enough, but it seemed a lot less severe than the torture that was going to happen during those three days in the prison that I was in. Most people had been taken to places like Evin prison or Kahrizak detention center. There was one that most people didn’t even know existed until after the protests — Level Minus Four detention center, an underground detention center that’s part of the Intelligence Ministry. The torture there seemed to be some of the worst, probably worse than that of the other prisons.
On the first day there, when they got us tehre, they staff started to search for severely injured people and gave them a little bit of aid. Some of the injured people had already passed out and a taxi driver that was there looked like he was already dead by that time. All types of government agents came and went. They were moving people. They were forcing people to just walk or to just stand for a really long time to prevent people from sitting down. I had no energy and could barely stand up. I leaned against a wall at one point to try to regain a bit of strength but when I did I was beaten. It looked like they had no idea what they were going to do with all the people that were there.
I noticed there were probably around 100 people that were in each room at first and there wasn’t enough space to sit on the ground. The officers were randomly beating up people in there. They were hitting people in the head and in there faces. They were trying to hit people as hard as they could. I was hit in the face really hard and I felt jaw my break after the fourth strike to my face. The beatings were brutal because they were using all their force and just wouldn’t stop hitting people. They weren’t giving people any food or any water.
The beatings were horrible and were with not only batons/electric batons, but with whatever else they could find. They were beating people mostly with electric batons, and sometimes regular batons. I was hit a few times with an electric baton and it was the worse feeling to have that shock go through my body. After that, they were starting to use cords to lash people with right in the back. I was hit several times with a cord and it was the worst pain that I had ever felt at the time the different times that cord was hitting my back. I had been hung up by my wrists again, and the lashings were so hard but I felt too weak to scream out in pain and my jaw was in pain that I couldn’t even open up my mouth for anything. It hadn’t even been that much time in there and already I was starting to lose all hope of being released and thought this was really going to be the moment that meant death for me.
After what seemed like hours of being hung up by my wirsts with chains, they finally let me out of the chains. I wasn’t thinking about what was going to happen next. The beatings had still continued for everyone that was there. Someone asked me if I knew where we were and I responded to him with just one simple word “Hell.” They were breaking people’s fingers, every other bone that they could break, and these other forms of beatings and of torture. They seemed to only just want to inflict as much pain as possible as they could on everyone they. Anything they knew was going to inflict a lot of pain — they did it. This continued all day. Even through the night, they were depriving people of getting any sleep.
On the second day, it looked like they were getting a little more organized and they started searching for any special cases with the people that were detained. After that, they moved me and some other people to a harsher environment. The beatings continued. I was hung up by my wrists again and was continually beaten and even lashed with a cord. It seemed like it only got a lot worse from the first day in there. I was just hanging there for a while. I was starting to want to death to come to me because I just had this feeling inside that I was not going to be released and I didn’t want to spend years in this kind of place. I was beaten on every part of my body and blacked out a few times. I could feel blood dripped down my back from the lashings and from my head again. My entire body was more than sore. It was like this for hours that day. I was nearly covered in my own blood from the beatings and the lashes.
In the early afternoon a man came in and said that we were going to be released that day. An hour later another person came in and told us that we were going to be in prison for 5 years. They continued to use things like electric cables to beat people with. They were breaking people’s fingers, people’s hands again. I saw some people lose consciousness from the pain and once they regained consciousness the beatings continued again. I lost consciousness a few times in that same time. One of the officers that was there refused to beat any of the detainees, and he looked like he was feeling bad for what was going on, and they arrested him right there and started beating him also. The beatings on everyone continued. I lost consciousness once during that time and woke up and felt blood dripping down my face and down the back of my head, felt a lot of blood dripping down my back. I saw one person that was in the same room that I was die from the severe beatings.
That same day some plainclothes officers came in with papers forcing people to sign them. The papers were all pre-written confessions all in different handwritings saying that the signer is a member of an organization by Mousavi. Some people signed the papers and some others would just fake their names. I didn’t know if I should sign my own name or sign a fake name. I almost didn’t see the point in signing a fake name because they already knew who I was and I thought that if I did that it would only make the situation even worse than it already was. There weren’t enough confession papers for everyone there. They were giving empty promises to people of freedom to people that signed them, but after most people signed them, they were never were released like they were told that they would be.
That entire night is one that plays over in my head sometimes and it is something that I wish that I could forget more than anything else. After a horrifying day of beatings and torture, I was taken to some solitary confinement room and I was sure it was where I was going to be stuck for those 5 years that I was told I was going to be in prison. I couldn’t even talk because my jaw was sore. I thought maybe this was going to be a time I could sleep a little bit at least and rest my eyes and regained just a little bit of strength. I was given some water by a guard but it was a mistake. The only thing I remembered not long after that was losing consciousness and then waking up, I don’t know how much longer after that, and my entire body felt strange. I felt strange. I couldn’t explain it then and I still can’t explain it now. I found out later what had happened then, that like others there that I had been drugged and raped by a guard. I heard claims of rape happening to men and women in prisons but didn’t think it was going to happen to me. I felt so much shame and more than violated. I had also been beaten while it happened. I felt more beaten up than I had before, I had more bruises all over me, welts on my arms and couldn’t move and could feel welts on my back. Even to this day, I still don’t feel the same because of it.
On the morning of the third day, a man came in and introduced himself as an Intelligence officer. He said that he was going record our confession with a camera. The other people and I that were told this were reluctant as to why this is what they were going to do that. He promised that if one of us confessed in front of the camera that they would free us all and that they would blur our face, that we would have nothing to worry about it. I didn’t believe it when I was told that, because of all the lies the government has said before about being released. It didn’t happen — there was no confession to a camera. There wasn’t any releases of people that were promised that. After that, I didn’t think I was ever going to be released after empty promises twice already and it not happening. The only thing I hoped at that point that was at least my family would know that I love them and would somehow seek to find out the truth about what happened.
Throughout the day, the beatings continued. There were times where I would go over an hour and nothing would happen and I was hoping the beatings were going to continue. When they did, it only added to the extreme pain that I was already in and felt like it made things worse. I almost felt like death was close and in my mind I was hoping that it was. Everything was too much for me to handle and was too much for my body to handle to go through this any much longer. I wanted death at that pointed, it seemed like the only way it was all going to end.
Close to 11P.M. that night, everything stopped for me. They released me and I was just taken to this hospital to be treated for my injuries — injuries on my body and the minor internal injuries, along with some internal bleeding I had. The doctors at the hospital were forced by the government to not ask any questions to patients but to just treat them and not say anything else. They would just treat people and once they were treated, they were out of the hospitals and I wasn’t given any time to recover in the hospital. I was outside of Tehran at the hospital that I was at and knew where I was and stayed at a friend’s house for a couple of days to get some rest.
I will still never know why suddenly they just released me and a few of the other inmates that I was with during those three days. I never want to question it because I felt lucky that I was when I felt like it was never going to happen. The fat of a few people that I knew, I never knew after that and didn’t know if they were still alive after that point. I only hoped that if they were in the same place or in another prison that they were going to be released. I later found out that one of them died in prison from similar forms of torture they were going through. I never felt more lucky to be alive then I did when I was released even though I was badly injured and had a broken jaw and needed to have my mouth wired shut.
