I was born in a small town in Northern Iran in September 1975, the third in a family of three children. Mohamed, the young man who is telling his story, is the son of a technical expert in a small family firm. Having finished his diploma in science in the local high school in 1997, he stayed on at school for an extra two years, hoping to avoid military service, even though this involved bribing the officer in charge of the nearby military recruitment office. His reasons were simple: several uncles and aunts, on both sides of the family, have been closely involved in opposition politics, and several have been arrested and tortured by the revolutionary guards. Mohamed has always been very close to his fathers sister, and her problems in Iran are closely linked to his own.
In 1999 I finally graduated and went to work in a small shop my fathers family has owned for several generations. We sell furniture and kitchenware. My aunt lived in a flat above the shop and during the day I would spend some time talking with her. She had no children, and her husband had been executed by the Iranian authorities in 1988 for belonging to the leftist Rah-e Kargar party. As many as eighty thousand people are now believed to have died in mass executions in 1988 (far more than was suspected until recently) after kangaroo trials by three-member death committees.
These massacres, which came shortly after the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, were seen as a sop to the Iranian hardliners at a moment when the Ayatollah Khomeini was already in poor health and the battle for succession between fundamentalists and moderates had begun. Such were the numbers of executions, that prisoners were loaded on to forklift trucks in groups of six and hanged from cranes. Children as young as thirteen were among them. While Mohameds immediate family were not members of any political organisation, they shared their brothers and sisters left-wing ideals. As a boy, he was given banned books to read.
My aunt had also spent five years in Evin Prison in Tehran, during which time she was tortured and lashed. After she was released, she was haunted by memories of the cries of other prisoners being tortured in cells nearby. She suffered from depression, and was given medicine to reduce her anxiety. She was tormented by what had happened to her husband. As part of her punishment, she had to report regularly to the Intelligence Headquarters in our local town, and each time this happened, her depressions returned. After a while, she stopped reporting.
Pushed into dissent
On 8 July 2000, after widespread student demonstrations throughout Iran, the secret services began to check up on former political prisoners. Revolutionary guards visited Mohameds shop to ask for his aunt, where they found her helping the young man with his studies. They pulled her about, and slapped her, and when Mohamed went to her help, they arrested him, and, blindfolding and handcuffing them both, took them to the local security headquarters.
I was put alone into a small cell with no toilet. It was dark. I could hear screams coming from nearby and I was very frightened. The days passed and I was given only a little bread to eat. Officers came regularly to my cell and slapped my face and kicked me all over my body. When I was asleep they took my blanket away and beat me. They kept asking about my aunts political activities, and who her friends were. After some days I was released and warned that if I ever defended my aunt again I would be tortured. What really frightened me was that the guards would discover that I had avoided military service.
My aunt had been given instructions to report regularly to the office of the Revolutionary Guards. From time to time, whenever there were demonstrations in our hometown, they would come to our house. On 21 December 2000, not long after some student demonstrations, four men came to arrest her again. My aunt struggled and tried to get away. She ran out on to her balcony, which was on the first floor, above the shop. One of the officers pushed her. We dont know if he was trying to grab her, or push her over, but she fell heavily against the railings, which came loose and she fell over into the road.
When I saw what had happened, I couldnt control myself. I started shouting at the officers, and soon they started to kick and slap me. Other officers arrived and began punching me. When I fell down they began kicking me in the groin. Neighbours came and tried to help me, and fighting broke out. In the confusion, a friend pulled me away and found a doctor for me. We told him that I had fallen downstairs, and he wanted me to go to hospital. But instead I went to hide in a friends house.
Mohamed learnt from his cousin, who came to see him that his aunt had broken her legs so badly in the fall that she would never walk again. He was also told that one of the officers had lost an eye in the fight and that the security guards were now looking for him. His father was detained and questioned, and the homes of all his relations were searched.
A friend of the family, who worked within the police force, made enquiries and discovered that the security forces intended to charge Mohamed with blinding a security officer, encouraging anti-government protest and insulting the authorities. For the loss of the officers eye, he would be liable to being blinded in one eye, in public, under Iranian Sharia law. For the two other offences, the prosecution would ask for the death sentence.
The prison of exile
For seven months, Mohamed stayed in hiding with friends. He left their house only twice, once when he got pneumonia and had to find a doctor, the other time to have photographs taken for a passport. He kept hoping that the political situation would change, but as the months passed and the security continued to keep him on their wanted list, his father decided that he must leave the country. Mohamed had no wish to leave Iran. He has no friends abroad, and speaks only Farsi.
Early in October 2001 I was taken to the airport at Tehran by an agent found by my father, to whom we had paid nine thousand five hundred dollars. He had given me a false passport. We flew first to Turkey, where I was given another passport by the agent and taken to a house and hidden for three nights. Then I was put into the back of a lorry and for many hours we travelled in the dark. When I was let out of the back I was told that I was at Dover, in the UK.
Today Mohamed has permanent nightmares and can only sleep by day, when it is light and there are people about. He is still in considerable pain on his right side, from the beatings he received, and has trouble if he tries to run. He is anxious and very lonely. Within Iran, the moderate president Mohammad Khatami appears to be having increasing difficulties in reining in hardline opponents, something that Mohamed fears spells growing danger for his family.
