In Iran, prisoners report of tortures: «They forced us to r#px each other while the guards were filming»

 

In Iran, prisoners report of tortures: «They forced us to r#px each other while the guards were filming»

We spoke to several protesters who had just been released from Iranian prisons, and experienced tortures by guards: «They deprived us of our dignity», one said. «They pushed us to think about suicide», another one reported

The voice message comes in Persian. It is four minutes of metallic, monotonous voice. Flowing words alternating with long silences and sighs. We get it translated. «Good morning, I am Ali (fictitious name, ed.), I am 42 years old and a taxi driver».

We have been trying to talk to him for a week. We know he just got out of jail, and we know he is one of the few willing to talk about what he has suffered, seen and heard. «I was arrested in front of Isfahan University (in central Iran, ed.) in late October. I was supporting students in the protests against dictator Khamenei».

Guards put him into a car and took him to a secret detention center. In addition to prisons-according to a World Prison Brief report, in 2014 there were 253 prisons-the regime has dozens of facilities whose addresses are not known to the public, where it interrogates, tortures and detains dissidents.

«They behave better with animals than with us», Ali says. «There was a very tall man in a balaclava. All he did was insult us and beat us». Then he starts with a tale of the unthinkable. «They would take us to a room and beat us up, threaten us and order to rape each other. On the ceiling, a camera was filming everything». They film in order to have material to blackmail protesters and force them to perjure themselves.

Iran Human Rights Monitor, a London-based NGO, confirms the atrocities Ali speaks of: «The systematic use of rape in prisons is nothing new. It happens on both women and men, with no difference». It happened in the 1980s, during the Green Revolution, in the 2019 protests, and even today. The numbers are unknown for two reasons: fear of victims being blackmailed by the regime and social stigma. Even a 2020 Amnesty International report confirms that rape is a widely used method of torture and repression, in addition to beatings, solitary confinement, waterboarding, and electroshock. «Primary sources told that investigators and guards perpetrated sexual violence on detainees. They would strip them naked, conduct invasive searches to humiliate them, use pepper spray on their genitals, and electroshock their testicles. Male prisoners were raped through penetration with various instruments, including bottles», the report says.

Ali and his comrades tried to stop the police officers’ inhumanity, but the more they resisted, the more they were beaten. «They were torturing us, we could hear others screaming from nearby cells. They were raping them». Then, the voice Wobbles, «They robbed us of our dignity». Through the London-based NGO, we also manage to get in touch with Sara (fictitious name, ed.), 23. Like Ali, she ended up in prison after a demonstration. She was also sexually assaulted. She was raped repeatedly by guards. While little has been written about rapes of men, CNN has reported on sexual assaults on Iranian female protesters, and there are many stories circulating on social media. Among them, the one of Armita Abbasi, 20, who ended up in the hospital.

Sara does not want to talk about the sexual abuse because «I still can’t get my mind back to those moments», she says, but she is keen to tell about another aspect of the torture: the psychological violence. «In prison, doctors try to brainwash you. They would repeat to me, ‘You have ruined your life, why do you protest?’ The psychologist told me that young people like me then commit suicide: ‘What is the point of a life lived like this?».

Sara recounts that they instigated her with the thought of taking her own life, but she replied that she wanted to live to see her Iran free. «The torturers would convince ordinary prisoners to mistreat us. They would stuff me with pills. I was forced to swallow them, they would wait for me to swallow. If I refused, the destination was the solitary confinement cell».

Today, Sara and Ali are out on parole. Ali had his taxi driver’s license revoked. In jail, he had no papers or cell phone with him. Attending demonstrations without anything that makes you too recognizable is the advice they give to all dissidents. Ali is not a politician, but he is part of one of the resistance cell moving under the leadership of Iran’s National Council of Resistance, and specifically the People’s Mojahedin, the regime’s number one enemy, off the European Union’s terrorist list since 2009. «If they had known my political vision they would have killed me». Ali recounts that there are many prisoners. NGOs speak of 15,000 protesters arrested since the protests began; numbers from inside the country speak of double that number. Yesterday, the story of Hamed Salahshoor, a young man who died in police custody with shocking signs of torture. «There are so many Mahsa Amini», Ali continues. We asked him about Alessia Piperno, the girl from Rome locked up in Evin prison. He does not know her story. «She was unlucky to end up here. The regime doesn’t respect anyone».

The vocal message ends with this sentence, «Sorry, that’s enough, I don’t feel well».