Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian

Author:Ervand Abrahamian [Abrahamian, Ervand]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-02-05T17:32:00+00:00

Stage Preparations

By late 1981, the prison wardens had put in place a routine procedure for interrogating incoming inmates. If not overly pressured for time, they placed them in solitary cells and, providing them with paper, ballpoint, and sometimes printed questionnaires, sought information on relatives, friends, and neighbors, as well as on their own lives and political leanings. Their key question here as well as later was: "Are you willing to give us an interview [mosahebeh]?"

After the initial interrogation, the prisoner would be taken to the taz`ir chambers for fuller confessions of crimes-real or imagined-and, most important of all, videotaped interviews. Constraints of time and solitary cells sometimes necessitated the skipping of the initial stage. If the interrogator in the ta`zir chamber was a mere layman, he would have telephone contact with clerical magistrates authorized to mete out discretionary punishments .31 The issue of mosahebeh would be raised persistently throughout the whole procedure-not only by the interrogator, but also by the prosecutor, by the trial judge, and by the warden once the prisoner had completed the sentence. Some remained incarcerated even after serving their sentences simply because they declined the honor of being interviewed. One prisoner reports that his trial judge put aside his file and simply asked, "Are you willing to be interviewed?"32 Another reports that the condemned were sometimes offered a reprieve if they provided the interview.33 Yet another says that in the ta'zir chamber his interrogator kept on repeating throughout his torment, "This hadd punishment will continue until you give us a videotaped interview."34

The techniques used in the ta`zir chambers resembled those of SAVAK. They included whipping, sometimes of the back but most often of the feet with the body tied on an iron bed; the qapani; deprivation of sleep; suspension from ceilings and high walls; twisting of forearms until they broke; crushing of hands and fingers between metal presses; insertion of sharp instruments under the fingernails; cigarette burns; submersion under water; standing in one place for hours on end; mock executions; and physical threats against family members. Of these, the most prevalent was the whipping of soles, obviously because it was explicitly sanctioned by the sharia.

The torture techniques included two innovations: the "coffin" and the compulsory watching of-and even participation in-executions. Some were placed in small cubicles, blindfolded and in absolute silence, for seventeen-hour stretches with two fifteen-minute breaks for eating and going to the toilet. These stints could last months-until the prisoner agreed to the interview. Few avoided the interview and also remained sane. Others were forced to join firing squads and remove dead bodies. When they returned to their cells with blood dripping from their hands, their roommates surmised what had transpired. In the summer, newcomers to Evin-including women-had to pass the main courtyard and view rows of hanged prisoners.35

The new interrogators differed from their predecessors in other subtle ways. Contrary to common belief, they avoided sexual organs. They shied away from the iron helmet, the metal prod, and the electrified chair; such mechanical devices were deemed too Western.

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