A State of Fear (21 page)

They had seen their comrades based in Iraq advancing following the announcement of the ceasefire, and seizing ground from the Pasdaran. Some families had told them that the regime was crumbling. All this had created a feeling of elation in the Mojahedin blocks. Some packed their belongings, ready to take the walk through the prison gates into the clear, free air. So when news came of an amnesty tribunal, they thought that they were virtually home and dry, already feeling clean civilian clothes on their backs, and decent food in their bellies. They could smell victory – could see the regime crumbling and knew it could only be a short time before Rajavi, their leader, shoved Khomeini into the gutter.

Now, the Mojahedin leaders liked to keep their footsoldiers’ spirits up with such stories, but this time it seemed to be confirmed by the Tribunal, which started holding sessions from the end of July 1988. The first batches of prisoners that came before the tribunals were told by the chief judge that its purpose was to give them amnesty. We’re going home boys, we’re going home, they thought.

Each man was asked, ‘What have you been accused of? What organisation do you belong to?’ Those that answered with the self-deriding ‘
Monafegh
’ – the regime’s term for the Mojahedin, meaning ‘fake Mojahed’ – were put in a forced labour block that they presumed to be a step nearer freedom. Those that stood straight, answering ‘Mojahed’, which means ‘soldier of God’, were sent to the top floor.

The Mojahedin felt they had good reason to be optimistic. Although they had answered, ‘
Monafegh
’ many times before to such questions, some thought that they could now afford to hold their heads up. They were duped into putting their necks into the noose.

After almost three weeks and nearly a thousand secret executions, the remaining Mojahedin began to realise what was happening. Guards appeared on the block, calling out men in
batches, often as many as a hundred – none of whom would be seen again. Like us, they looked anxiously from their cell windows to see empty blocks. In discussion, they agreed to answer ‘
Monafegh
’ to the main question. But other questions followed: ‘Are you prepared to do a TV interview and sign a petition, denouncing the Mojahedin organisation?’ Those that said no joined the queue for the gallows.

Later the Tribunal upped the stakes further, as Mojahedin members tried to twist and turn out of the hangman’s noose. Now the Tribunal asked, ‘Are you ready to co-operate with prison officials and give us the information you have about other prisoners?’ Those who agreed to do this were transferred to the blocks to be processed by the tribunal. Two of them were put in our block, but we were lucky enough to realise what was going on. The sudden introduction of two Mojahedin into a left-wing block was bound to ignite suspicion at this time of heightened fear and distrust.

Towards the end of the slaughter of the Mojahedin, the Tribunal became more choosy about what ‘co-operation’ entailed: total support for the regime, blanket condemnation of the Mojahedin and all other opposition groups, signed petitions and televised interviews were not enough. Neither was a vague promise to inform on fellow prisoners. The Tribunal now demanded the names of five Intransigents if the man in front of them was not to dangle from a length of cable.

The ‘lucky’ survivors from the Mojahedin blocks went to do forced labour. The other 80 per cent were hanged. It took the Tribunal a month to administer this ‘amnesty’ to about 1,500 men in Gohardasht. That’s before they started on the left wing.

I had lived close to many Mojahedin during my years in jail. I was particularly concerned about those I knew. I asked about Habib, with whom I shared a cell in quarantine at the Golden Fortress. He had acute intestinal problems. Those who had been with him said he had been constantly warning, ‘We’re walking
into the regime’s net. We’re being sliced through like a cucumber!’ When he went before the Tribunal, far down the line of the Mojahedin inquisitions, they didn’t bother to ask ‘
Monafegh
or Mojahed?’ but straight away demanded information about prison resistance. He refused to answer and went to the top floor.

I asked about Karim, who had read a poem at the ceremony for Hasan Sedighri. Karim had been a Tavab years ago at Evin and the Golden Fortress. He had been tried early on, and answered ‘Mojahed’. He was executed. Some Mojahedin comrades I asked about did survive, thankfully. But they were the lucky few.

Final confirmation that a massacre was taking place reached us from the ground floor of block 20, which faced onto a yard. From their window, they saw the coming and going of large refrigeration lorries, two or three at a time, day and night. Their curiosity heightened by the rumours, the men in the block posted a 24-hour watch. One day a lorry stopped within clear view. The back opened. It was loaded with large parcels. Guards jumped on top of the pile as similar parcels were passed up to add to the load. Each was wrapped in plastic sheeting, tied with twine at either end. From the unsteady way in which the guards found their footing on top of the load it was clear what was in the packages – bodies. There had been a constant movement of these meat-wagons to an unknown graveyard for at least two months.

These mass graves are still being unearthed in south Tehran. Bodies were dumped into shallow trenches by the thousand and hastily covered. Heavy rain washed away parts of the thin topsoil, exposing the corpses to scavenging dogs. After one storm, the destitute shanty-town dwellers in the area saw hundreds of dogs helping themselves at one partly-exposed mass grave. News spread fast, and Islamic Guards moved in quickly to pile earth over the exposed trench. But the place was
known, and the families of thousands butchered in the massacre still gather at the site on Fridays to mourn those taken from them, often bringing food to hand out in the shanty town. Every year in September there is a big commemoration here, at which those who lost their lives for their beliefs are remembered and celebrated.

Tension increased to the edge of madness for many of us. The only ones not affected were those who had no sanity left to lose. Most of us thought about the barely conceivable situation obsessively, night and day. We would all have to go through these tribunals. How could we avoid putting our necks in the noose? How were we going to avoid this calamitous fate? Vigilance, and clinging to contact with other blocks like life itself – for that was what it meant – became the be-all and end-all of existence.

One morning we sat up to find the block below us was now empty. We knew where they had gone. Some very dear comrades had been taken away.

Long meetings were held about how to face the tribunal, what to say to it, how to survive it. We had relative freedom to associate within our own block at this time. The guards were mostly busy with their offensive, but we still had to watch out for anyone who might be listening and could pass on information about our discussions. We still had to watch for elements who might crack under severe pressure under these most extreme circumstances.

We agreed that it meant death to confess to being a communist or a socialist or, indeed, any oppositionist to the Islamic regime. But it was left to the individual as to whether he said if he prayed. At previous prison inquisitions, we had always managed to dodge this question. Each prisoner was asked to approach the question of ‘co-operation’ with the authorities carefully. The issue of whether or not one prayed was not the central concern; defending your integrity, your comrades and fellow prisoners was. I said it was better to
accept death than to give any information that would lead to further arrests or the execution of other inmates. ‘For me, the bottom line is, do you sacrifice your dignity and comrades, or your own life? If I was prepared to compromise, I would not have spent nearly ten years here’. In my own cell, this approach was agreed upon.

Certainly, this very same discussion echoed around every cell in the block, and in the cells of other blocks. As far as other prisoners were concerned, my position was that each prisoner had to decide for himself how he would conduct himself. The situation was of such an extraordinary nature that we could not possibly hold some sort of block vote to decide a general line that everyone had to follow: each prisoner was due to face an almost split-second decision-making procedure - each individual had to establish for themself how they were to survive and how they would protect their fellow prisoners.

And so my turn came.

The guards arrived at our block. We were all led from our cells and out of the block, blindfolded. From where we were located, on the second floor, we were taken down to ground level, in single file and in absolute silence. Each of us had our right hand upon the shoulder of the prisoner in front of us. We were taken to a long corridor where many prisoners were waiting, sat cross-legged on the floor in a queue. The queue led to the door to the ‘inquisition chamber’. Here, prisoners were ‘processed’ one-by-one by this ‘inquisition panel’. Such was the speed of each hearing that another prisoner would be called every two or three minutes.

It was a good two hours before I got to the head of the queue, but finally my turn arrived. I was taken into the room to face the inquisition. I was sat on a chair and was told to remove my blindfold. I saw six people. I recognised the faces of two
well-known
Islamic judges behind a desk. These two presided over Divisions 1 and 2, respectively, of the Islamic courts. They were
responsible for dealing primarily with the left-wing organisations and other oppositionists and, as such, their department was responsible for executing thousands of prisoners between 1981 and 1988. Haji Mobasheri had dealt with me before, back in 1982 and 1983, and again in 1986.

The other two clerics of the inquisition panel were Haji Raisi, the head prosecutor, and Ayatollah Eshraghi, Khomeini’s son-in-law, the biggest landlord in the holy city of Qum: a rich man indeed. Now this man, who had so mysteriously accumulated vast amounts of property after 1979, appeared before us as the chief judge of our morals, holding all our lives in his hand.

The tribunal had to establish during the interview whether the prisoner was a non-Muslim (or
Mortad
, one born a Muslim but who has since rejected Islam) and/or a communist, or if he was hostile in any way to the regime. They asked each prisoner the same questions, and had no individual case papers. This ‘amnesty inquisition’ had been set up at the behest of Khomeini, who had issued a fatwa to ‘eradicate all the
Monafeghs
, Mortads and communists’.

They explained, ‘The Imam has given us the task of distinguishing between those prisoners who continue to oppose our Islamic Republic, and those who do not. On this basis we will oversee the amnesty for suitable prisoners.’ He had told other prisoners that the panel was there to ‘look into any problems you might have.’

With this short explanation out of the way, it immediately became clear that we were the real problem. And so the standard questioning commenced.

‘Are you a Muslim?’ he asked.

‘I was born into a Muslim family, but religious practice was never very strong in our house – my father was a constant drinker’, I answered.

‘But I want to know whether you are a Muslim now!’

‘I consider myself as much a Muslim as my mother and father do’.

Second question. ‘Did you pray before you came to prison? Do you pray here in prison?’

‘No, I do not pray in prison. Neither did I pray outside of prison. In order to be true to myself and to others, I have not put up a show of praying just for the sake of appearances.’

Third question. The prosecutor, Haji Raisi, now took up the line of questioning. ‘Which grouplet did you belong to?’ He used the term ‘grouplet’ as a putdown, to belittle political opposition groups generally.

‘All through my interrogation and three appearances in court, I have constantly stressed the fact that I have never been a member of any organisation’. This had always been my answer to this line of questioning throughout my detention. Not even now was I prepared to alter it.

Haji Raisi probed further. ‘What is your analysis of the Islamic revolution and of the Islamic regime?’

‘The Islamic regime is an untypical form of government, based on the authority of Imam Khomeini and the Shia clergy, which arose after the popular revolution of millions of people against the Shah’s despotic regime,’ was my answer, deliberately ambiguous, and similar to one of the left group’s broader formulations dating back to 1981.

Fourth question. ‘Are you ready to pray as soon as you get back to your block?’

‘I have no aversion to praying, but I am unable to pray because I have a broken back. The infirmary has all the documentation on my condition.’

‘Then you can sit on the floor and pray! And you can have 50 lashes for not praying in prison. And ten more for any prayer session that you miss from now on. Now get out! Next!’

And that was it. All over inside three minutes! Before I knew what was happening, I was whisked out of the room just as
quickly as I had entered it. I had managed to manoeuvre sufficiently to spin out my allotted few minutes before the inquisition panel. But more importantly, as I had intended, I had given away nothing nor had I compromised or implicated anyone. In fact I had not even told an untruth. Those three minutes could have been the end of me, and I had managed to emerge with just a few lashes. But so many had not been so fortunate, so many had been lost before we had been able to formulate an ‘escape plan’ from the inquisition panel.

The guard walked over to me and tugged on my arm. ‘Get up and put your blindfold back on.’ I was led out of the inquisition chamber and off to the queue for the lashes. I could hear the screams of those who had been placed on the tables to be lashed. But on the other side of the corridor was a line of prisoners who awaited the gallows.

As I looked over to them, the voice of Haji Naserian called out. ‘Oh, dearest Khomeini, in your fatwa you ask us to bleed these infidels to death!’ This chilling invocation was directed at the line of prisoners awaiting the hanging chamber. Then another voice returned, ‘Don’t forget to make your will! Do not be too cowardly to make you own will!’ Again, this was directed at the soon-to-be executed prisoners. Rhythmic death threats and morbid jeers, often in rhyming couplets, were accompanied by the screams of those stretched across tables having the soles of their feet lashed. These sounds echoed round the corridor like a chant from hell.