Former Iranian Woman Political Prisoner

By: Soudabeh Ardvan; Evin Prison

Samira: She was charged with participating in demonstrations against the Islamic Republic. At first, she was detained, interrogated, and finally, blindfolded on the floor, and sentenced to two years in jail. There was no judge nor a jury or a lawyer. "Islamic justice" did not take more than a few minutes.It was the most despicable time in the history of the Islamic regime. Interrogation, torture, execution were the order of the day. For the next 8 years, she would be transferred, from Evin to Ghessel Hessar prison, back and forth, from one unit to another, spending time in between in solitary confinement.============She remembers the first time she entered a cell. She thought she had entered a girls school. The prisoners were all young girls, in their teens. Sometimes, there were older women, as old as one's grandmother. They had apparently aided the prisoners or were family members

Soudabeh Ardavan is from Tabriz, a former political prisoner now living in Sweden. She is in her early 40's. She spent eight years of her precious life in the Islamic regime's jail. She is also an artist who drew prison life while she was confined in a cell with other women.
=========Through these images, drawn from the time she became a prisoner in 1981 until she was released in 1989, Soudabeh tells a story of those horrible days. While in prison, her mother had a stroke because she had thought Soudabeh was among the many executed prisoners; she could not bear the thought of it. She died at age 57, a year after Soudabeh was released.