A State of Fear (20 page)

I was constantly warned not to associate with him. But I felt I understood his strengths and weaknesses, and knew I was safe with him. In fact, I tried my best to integrate him back into the main body of left prisoners, with some success. Amou’s own (generally) buoyant and sociable disposition helped no small amount.

On prison high days and holidays – such as they were – he would throw his all into the proceedings to make things go with a swing. We celebrated May Day, International Women’s Day, the anniversary of the Russian revolution and the like. As the guards had their calendars ringed in red on these days and were on the lookout for any untoward joviality, we celebrated covertly and a couple of days in advance. Such festivities amounted to getting spruced up as best as was possible – a wash and shave was all that could be done – and go round the cells bringing greetings. Statements were read quietly, and certain individuals on your block would be invited to discreet gatherings in a particular cell some time later.

Amou, our master autodidact, would do the rounds of the cells with me and a couple of younger comrades. One May Day he composed a poem, which he had set to a jazz-like rhythm. He schooled us as his ‘scat’ backing vocalists. He read out his composition, while our backing group lined up behind him to set the tempo. ‘Dang dang-dang dang, Dang dang-dang dang.’
Over this, Amou went into what was a rap, albeit performed by a septuagenarian Persian, about workers’ unity and the road to socialism. Fluid, staccato Persian was interspersed with
pidgin-English
which made its appearance to cover key words and concepts which would have incurred the wrath of the guards had they overheard and understood.

The prison had discovered its own beat poet. Word went round the block and our performance became much in demand. The word went out to come to cell 24, one of the larger rooms in the block, on May Day after 8pm, when the presence of the guards was at a minimum. Each bunk bed became a tightly filled stall as the audience swelled in anticipation of the night’s entertainment. Not quite Carnegie Hall, but it did much to lift morale, especially Amou’s.

When the struggle hotted up in Gohardasht, Amou was at the forefront. He hammered on the door and harangued officials with the best of them during the protest over the confiscation of our stoves. On one such occasion, in the spring of 1988, he was snatched from the front of the crowd and dragged away. He was taken to the central office, where five guards set upon this old man. Fists, clubs and cables fell upon a body that bore all the scars of 70 years of injustice in Iran. Two hours later, he was thrown, half-dead, back into his block.

During the night, Amou burned up with fever and pain. His cellmates hammered on the door, demanding that he should be taken to the infirmary. The guards sneered, ‘Let the old bastard die.’ Amou did not recover. In the heart of that dark night, he closed his eyes, and never opened them again. The daylight he waited for is still below the horizon.

One night, at about 10pm, two officials came to our block. One of them was Haji Mahmoud, a young mullah from the religious city of Qom. He was one of the prison authority’s troubleshooters and also a censor. They sat in the main corridor
and asked about our grievances – although they knew already. Group after group told them, citing the particular needs of individuals who needed more food, exercise and the like.

Our demands were met with a rebuke: ‘We no longer recognise your elected representatives. From now on, we will decide who we deal with on your block, or we will deal with no one.’ So now we had another demand – to get our own representatives recognised.

The next day we drummed on the door with greater insistence. Between 80 and 100 angry prisoners queued, demanding to see the officials. The doors opened, Haji Mahmoud and a crony came forward and the mass of prisoners surged through. The two officials turned and ran, fleeing like frightened chickens. They had been humiliated.

Half an hour later, once we had been forced back inside, the block doors reopened, admitting 50 club-wielding guards. They went from cell to cell, starting where the disturbed and deranged were kept. Beating and breaking, they wreaked havoc in all 22 cells. Everything and everyone in the cell was smashed and thrown into the corridor. Not one possession was left intact, not one prisoner escaped a beating.

We were hauled to our feet and told to go to the prayer room. Those who couldn’t walk were dragged. Those who could walk were ordered to take all their possessions, which were stacked in the centre of the room: a mountain of books, clothes, bedding, cutlery. The guards rummaged through each prisoner’s sack, looking for anything that might be incriminating. Then we were instructed to return to our cells while the guards continued their search. Of course, we lost watches, money and other valuables. But our real worry was that they might unearth material that would allow them to send prisoners back to court for organising resistance. Books, letters, the fabric of our sacks, were picked through. Handwriting samples and books were taken out for further investigation.

Three large plastic cases of wine were also unearthed. We had been making wine in an Islamic prison! A poet, Kamal, was in charge of our illicit vat. We had fermented wine out of grapes, raisins and berries bought at the prison shop. Our moonshine was concealed under bedding and sacking in the corner of two or three cells – and in the prayer room!

Our sacrilege enraged the guards, who went from cell to cell trying to find out who the underground vintner was. Fortunately, not many people knew – the wine was a closely guarded secret. And with a knife at your neck, you learned to shake your head in denial. If you nodded, the movement of your head would push the knife point into the soft underside of your chin.

Beatings, threats and solitary did not yield any results, and Kamal’s role remained hidden. He had another vulnerable point. He would write poetry on prison conditions and resistance, which he would ask me to translate into English, so that even if the guards found them they would not understand. But this exposed me: as the translations were in my hand, I could be shot.

We hoped other secrets would remain hidden. What they’d taken from the blocks in the form of messages on paper and in books was in carefully concealed code, which we hoped wouldn’t be detected, let alone deciphered.

The next week was spent clambering over this mountain of possessions, trying to reclaim our shirts, bedding – even our bloody toothbrushes, buried somewhere deep within. Then came the slow process of putting our cells back in order. At the end of all this, there was stuff left unclaimed in the pile: possessions that had been at the bottom of prisoners’ sacks so long, they’d forgotten they had them. So we ‘nationalised’ it. Anyone who needed anything from this residual pile could come along and take it.

But the authorities were able to piece together evidence of an
organisational network among the Mojahedin in one or two blocks. A couple of prisoners were fingered and put into solitary. They caved in under tremendous pressure, and were paraded in front of the other prisoners in their block. They ‘confessed’, asked forgiveness and appealed for other prisoners to follow their example. This was the authorities’ response to developing resistance. We heard on the grapevine that the fight was not confined to Gohardasht. In other jails in Iran, prisoners were rising up and asserting their rights.

At this time, each prisoner was interviewed by a panel. He or she would be asked, ‘Are you a Muslim? Do you pray? Do you support the Islamic Republic? Are you ready to go to the front to fight Iraqi aggression? Do you still have any affinity with the political group you were working with to overthrow the Islamic Republic?’

All those who answered that they were Muslims and prayed, were put together in one block, whether Mojahedin or left. Those who said they were Muslim but did not pray, were put with us. Now all the blocks were arranged on religious lines.

Prisoners were also split up according to the length of sentence. Those serving more than ten years were isolated inside two blocks within Gohardasht. One block was reserved for intransigents, the other for passives.

Within a month of the interviews, the whole of Gohardasht was organised along these lines. This disrupted resistance and it was a number of months before we were able to get our bearings and once again build up our network of contacts. 

A
new block was formed from Evin intransigents of men who had completed their sentences but whom the regime refused to free because they had not said the right things at their release interviews. They had refused to appear on televised interviews denouncing the opposition in Iran. Such prisoners were to be held indefinitely. Some had received two-year sentences but were still behind bars six years later. There were about 200 of them and their families campaigned for their release.

As tentative contacts were renewed, each block in turn began to test the regime’s resolve. How would it react to a new round of prison resistance? In my block we established good contacts with those around us. But there was still a mood of suspicion over why we had been segregated in this new way.

The Iranian war effort was waning. Iraq was growing more confident and successful, and international pressure, focusing on UN Security Council Resolution 595 calling for the immediate
cessation of hostilities, was stepped up. The Iranian front line crumbled in parts of the north west and Iraqi forces broke through. Khomeini took the poisoned chalice of the forced peace.

For the first time prison television showed the advance of Mojahedin commandos from bases in Iraq. Then things changed: one Friday afternoon in late July 1988, a couple of days after this news item was screened, all televisions were removed, scheduled visits from our families due the next day were cancelled until further notice; exercise periods were withdrawn; access to the infirmary and all other medical treatment for the sick was stopped; and we were confined to our blocks. Our isolation was total: we were not even permitted to read the Islamic regime’s official daily paper. Everyone in Gohardasht was in quarantine. Even the guards were not allowed to leave the prison compound.

Days passed. The daily radio news broadcast at 2pm was stopped. We were desperate for news. Inmates in blocks closest to the guards’ quarters would try and overhear what was said on the guards’ radio. At 2pm these blocks would go deadly silent. Those with the sharpest ears would lie on the floor, put their ears to the narrow gap between the heavy iron block door and the ground, and try to pick up the faint strains of the broadcast. What they gleaned would be relayed to other blocks by Morse code tapped out on the floor and ceilings. In this way we could compare notes on what each block had gathered, piecing together the fragments of half-heard news. Information gathering and dissemination became the particular remit of certain blocks.

We discussed the likely effects of the military defeat throughout the country – in particular, what its effect would be in the prisons. I argued that Khomeini would seek an accommodation with the West and reactionary regimes in the region to give the regime a breathing space. If the regime was forced to adopt such a policy it would have to reduce pressure in the prisons as part of the public relations exercise to ingratiate
itself with the West. Other comrades were more hesitant and feared the worst. Unfortunately, their pessimism was to prove well founded…

We heard that the Mojahedin prisoners were buoyant, believing that their advancing forces would soon take Tehran and release them. Their leaders told them to pack up their things, and wait for the prison doors to swing open.

Then suddenly the prison was hit by an Iraqi Scud missile. It came screaming out of a quiet night. Part of the prison’s west wing was destroyed and several prison guards were killed. The force of the blast left hardly a single window intact. Many of us were cut by the flying glass. Prisoners were picked up and thrown against the opposite wall of their cells by the impact. We didn’t know what the hell was going on – it felt like the end of the world. Shock and panic exploded immediately after the impact. The insane howled, screamed and cried from their cells.

When we’d picked ourselves up and assessed what had happened, we took the view that Khomeini didn’t have long left if the Iraqis were this close. It all contributed to the growing uncertainty in the jail. At a time when tension was high, the rocket blast acted as an additional force to push many prisoners over the edge.

Stress built up like steam in a piston. By the second month of quarantine, we were conscious of new developments in adjoining blocks. Normally at night we were aware of prisoners moving around in nearby blocks as their bodies broke the light from their cells as they walked. Then the frequency of this decreased, then stopped. Now no one obstructed the light opposite us. Then the lights went out permanently. Each of these blocks had held more than 200 Mojahedin. Now they were empty.

Information filtered through from other blocks that the same thing was happening in their line of sight. Either they had been moved to other prisons, or… we dared not think.

Some of us decided to buttonhole prison officials to find out what was going on. Of course, we knew the officials wouldn’t tell us what was really happening, but we might be able to read between the lines in a face-to-face meeting. We needed to glean some idea of what was going on in their minds. What was in store for us?

Information was at a premium and had never been so scarce. It was necessary to have mass support if we were to take even one step forward. There was no chance of success for individual protest action. But some on our block were reluctant to take on the officials. Those on the right were opposed to any action in principle. On the left, others urged patience because of the unknown circumstances. We were groping forward, blind.

I went from cell to cell rallying support for our proposed course of action. We were in a total blockade. The withholding of medicines put many of our lives in danger. We had the right to know why this was happening, and how long we would be held in isolation. What new crime had we committed to merit such treatment?

After a week of extensive discussion most cells had convinced themselves that unified action was the right response. Eighty out of 120 people on our block agreed to this course of action. Next morning, we asked those who supported us to gather at the door of the block. The guard came in response to our drumming on the door, and we demanded to see a prison official. He left and we remained by the door. After standing there for about an hour, we started knocking on the door again. The guard returned, cursing us, and pulled me and three others through the door.

‘Stay there!’ he ordered us, ‘I’ll bring someone down to talk to you.’

We were blindfolded and each of us was stood in one corner of the corridor facing the wall. We stood there for two more hours before anyone came back. A low-ranking official with
whom we were familiar came and told us to turn round and tell him what we had on our minds.

I said, ‘I’ve been asked to tell you that many prisoners want to know why we are in quarantine. How long will it last?’

‘The decision has been made at a level above prison management’, he told us. ‘We don’t have to explain their reasons to you. And there is no way we can know when this emergency will end. By now you should have learned that in Islamic prison no one has the right to speak for anyone else.’

‘Speaking only for myself, then,’ I responded, ‘I need medical attention. Without the medicine that my family brings me every month, my life is in jeopardy. Doesn’t that give me the right to question why you are cutting off our essential supplies?’

‘Dead or alive, you’ll stay in this condition as long as you’re told to! We’re losing thousands of young Pasdars at the front – do you really think we give a toss if thousands of you drop dead in the meantime? You’re lucky to be alive at all. Go! We don’t want to hear you whining again.’

One of my fellow negotiators attempted to argue with him. The official ignored him, instead turning to the guard and telling him, ‘Put each one of them in a solitary cell.’ He turned on his heel and left.

We were bundled off and, once in solitary, tried to communicate with one another and with other inmates in cells around us, using morse code. Someone tapped through that many prisoners had been hanged. I was reluctant to accept this, believing that it could be a rumour planted by the authorities – a scare story to demoralise and intimidate us.

We were back in our block the next day. For reasons that became clear later, the authorities did not want to keep prisoners in that part of the jail because they were concerned about what we might hear.

I prepared a balance sheet of prison resistance and what it had achieved in our block. We managed to get it to the comrades
from our organisation in the block below. In particular, I pointed out our success in organising a united opposition to the prison regime, although at least 60 per cent of our block were considered passives. This spurred on resistance in the block below, which took the form of a limited hunger strike. Their key demand was for information about what was going on.

Officials came to the block below a week after our protest. They had a list with the names of four prisoners, who were taken away. Two were members of Rahe Kargar – one named Hossein Hajimohsen, the other Ebrahim Najaran. The third was a Fedayeen Minority member, and the last was a Peykar supporter. They were put in solitary.

News was coming in from other sources throughout the prison that thousands of Mojahedin prisoners had been hanged, and that hundreds from the left had met the same fate. Patchy though this information was, it was all pointing to the same thing: a mass execution of political prisoners.

By covering and uncovering the iron blinds on the cell windows, we could send semaphore-style messages from block to block by night. In this way we received news about what was happening. Claims about the massacre spread in this way, but there was no way of confirming it, and we remained suspicious. Then more concrete evidence came in which dismayed us all. Three days after our four comrades were removed from the block below, we received this coded message, which was deciphered over three long nights.

‘I was taken out of block 8 with 24 other comrades. We were taken down to the main lobby. There we were seated on the floor, facing the wall. One by one, we were taken to a room. We were told this was an amnesty tribunal. Each one that entered, came out a few minutes later and was led to the end of the corridor, where there was a big iron door leading to the large auditorium. When it was my turn, the guard grabbed my wrist and took me in. I was directed to a chair, and was told to take
off my blindfold. The Tribunal was composed of four mullahs, the head of prison security and the prison liaison officer, also a mullah. I was ordered to introduce myself. On hearing my name, they asked me the following questions:

‘“Are you a Muslim? Do you pray in prison? Why did you become a supporter of an ungodly organisation? Are you ready to condemn your past activity and the activities of all opposition organisations in a televised interview? What would be your response if you were asked to go to the front in the war against Iraq? Are you ready to co-operate with prison officials in identifying those inmates who oppose the Islamic government? Do you consider the Islamic regime an anti-imperialist government? If so, why?”

‘This took three minutes for them to ask and me to answer. All the while they swore that I was a hardcore activist, just trying to cover my true nature. I was then cursed, kicked, pulled out of the room and directed towards the big iron door. Their parting shot was “Take him to the top floor”.

‘I joined a queue. More than 50 waited in line, blindfolded. An hour and more passed. Then a guard called out 25 names. All the while, I was trying to find out whether those around me had been given amnesty or were destined for the top floor. All I could tell was that the others in the queue had been asked the same questions as me, and we were all waiting as a consequence. Once more, a guard called out 25 more names, and the queue shuffled forward.

‘Now I was at the front of the line, right up against the iron door. It was covered in a thick carpet to muffle the sounds of what was happening inside. The whole area was dimmed, lit up only when the door opened to let guards in and out. I noticed that these guards looked different from the normal ones. They wore no uniforms, were bare-footed, with sleeves and trouser legs rolled up. They had shaved heads and thick beards. As they passed, they shouted Islamic slogans. Suspicious of this change of
routine, I wanted to see inside when the guards passed, but did not want to attract any attention.

‘Eventually, the door opened enough for me to glimpse a pile of prison slippers, dumped like lorry-loads of potatoes. When the guard returned, I craned to look over his shoulder, as soon as his back was turned.

‘I saw 30 to 40 bodies hung by the neck from blue plastic cords looped from a horizontal iron bar above the stage area. They had been executed. I recognised Hossein Hajimohsen and Ibrahim Najaran, both from Rahe Kargar. Now I knew what being “taken to the top floor” meant.

‘Another hour passed. A guard came, and called out more names. Mine was first – but not quite. They got my first name wrong – Hossein, instead of Hassan. I stood and said: “Brother, my name is not Hossein, it is Hassan. There is a mistake, I should not be taken to the top floor. There is a Hossein, but with the same surname, in another block.”

‘He insisted I come with him. I tore off my blindfold and ran towards the tribunal door, chased by these new guards. I shouted as I ran, “I swear to God my name is not Hossein, I swear to god my name is not Hossein!” again and again.

‘By the time the guards got hold of me, I was already in the room, pleading my case before the tribunal. One of the mullahs fished out another file from the stack on the desk. After poring over it quickly, he told the guards to take me back to my block.

‘Judging by the mound of prison slippers I saw, they must have already killed thousands of our comrades.’

This story was substantiated by other sources. Disbelief crumbled. We now knew what had happened to those in the empty blocks and what was likely to happen to us too.

I have said that the Mojahedin were singled out first. It was a reality for them while it was still a rumour for us. When the survivors were moved from their now denuded and echoing blocks, I had a chance to talk to them.