Showing posts with label Evin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evin. Show all posts

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Iran: Revelation of an Underground Prison run by Lebanese Hizballah!



افشای نام بازداشتگاهی در عمق زمين و مخوف تر از 209 اوينگفته می شود، اداره بخشی از اين بازداشتگاه بر عهده افراد حزب الله لبنان است و دانشجويان و بازداشت شدگان دوران اخير- بويژه کسانی که از شهرستان ها به تهران منتقل شده اند- از تونل اين بازداشتگاه عبور کرده و سپس سر از بند 209 اوين در می آورند!


Peyk Net: News Leaked by political activists, report an underground prison in Tehran which is said to be more hair-raising than section 209 of Evin prison (Tehran's gulag). Management of some sections of this prison are said to be by individuals from Lebanese Hezbollah. The recent arrests of students, in particular, those who were transferred from other cities to Tehran, all have passed the tunnel of this prison and eventually ended up in Section 209 of Evin Prison.


در روزهای اخير، از جانب برخی فعالان سياسی داخل کشور که در پی کسب اخبار و رويدادهای داخل زندان ها و بازداشتگاه ها هستند، خبرهای جسته گريخته ای در باره يک بازداشتگاه پنهان منتشر شده است. اين بازداشتگاه " سوله کهريزک" نام دارد که در سطحی پائين تر از زمين قرار دارد و درواقع بازداشتگاهی زير زمينی است.
....
گفته می شود برخی دانشجويان بازداشت شده دوران اخير سر از اين "سوله" در آورده اند. در اين بازداشتگاه هيچ زندانی حق هواخوری و ديدن آفتاب را ندارد. استفاده از مستراح فقط يکبار در طول روز مجاز است و جيره زندانيان نيز تنها در يک نوبت توزيع ميشود و عمدتا سيب زمينی پخته و يا تخم مرغ پخته به همراه نان است. همچنين شايع است که "سوله کهريزک" بازداشتگاه جديدی نيست، اما انتقال بازداشت شدگان ايرانی به آن جديد است. اين بازداشتگاه پيش تر در اختيار حزب الله لبنان بوده و حتی برخی اعضای فعال القاعده در ارتباط با لبنان و فلسطين نيز در اين بازداشتگاه نگهداری می شده و زندانبانان از کادرهای حزب الله لبنان بوده اند.


It is reported that some of the students ended up in this prison. In this prison no one is allowed to see the light or get fresh air. You're only allowed to use the bathroom once a day. The prisoners are fed only once day; mostly boiled potatoes or boiled eggs with bread. It is also rumored that "Suleh Kahrizak" is not a new prison, but transferring Iranian prisoners there is something new. Previously, this prison was under the jurisdiction of Lebanese Hezbollah and even some Al- Qaeda members in relation to Lebanon and Palestine were held there and the prison guard were Lebanese Hezbollah members.


اين زندانبانان همچنان در "سوله کهريزک" فعال اند و حتی در روزهای اول انتقال برخی بازداشت شدگان دانشگاهی چه از تهران و چه از شهرستانها به سوله کهريزک، توسط همين زندانبانان مورد ضرب و شتم و شکنجه قرار گرفته اند و سپس بازجوهای ايرانی بتدريج آنها را تحويل گرفته اند و کار شکنجه و اعتراف گيری را سازمان داده اند.

These Lebanese guards are still active in "Suleh Kahrizak" and those prisoners from either Tehran or other cities who were transferred there were beaten and tortured by these Lebanese guards and then Iranian interrogators gradually took their custody and organized their own torture and forced confessions logistics. (Note: Iranians don't speak Arabic.)

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Sunday, April 15, 2007

Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir




Ottawa Citizan: Two Revolutionary Guards came to arrest Marina Nemat on Jan. 15, 1982. She was at home in Tehran, about to take a bath. It was 9 p.m. Marina was just 16.

Marina's problems, as detailed in her new heartbreaking memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, had started two years earlier when she had asked a preachy school teacher to stuff the politics and stick to calculus. Marina was ordered to leave the classroom. Most of the other students trailed after her in solidarity.

Later, Marina attended rallies protesting the Islamic government of Ayatollah Khomeini. She also wrote for a rebellious student newspaper. She was definitely travelling with the wrong crowd, according to the authorities. And she was definitely being watched.
Friends began to be arrested. Marina knew her turn would come. Her sweetheart, Andre, an electrical engineering student, urged her to flee. But there was nowhere to go.

Wrapped in a cashmere shawl and clutching a string of Catholic prayer beads, Marina was taken to Evin Prison, the infamous hellhole where Montreal photo-journalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested, tortured, raped and killed in 2001, simply for taking photographs of a student protest outside the building.

At Evin, Marina was whipped into unconsciousness and then sentenced to death during a secret trial. Just before she could be shot, she was rescued by a guard named Ali she had met the night of her arrest. The world suddenly got even stranger.

For reasons that still baffle Marina today, Ali had fallen madly, obsessively in love with her at first sight. He proposed marriage. Marina had no choice. If she refused or tried to escape through suicide, Ali vowed he would hurt her parents and Andre. Marina was also forced to pretend to convert publicly to Islam from Christianity. She and Ali were married July 23, 1982 in the home of Ali's parents. After a brief "honeymoon" of repeated rapes, Marina was sent back to prison and put in solitary so Ali could visit and spend nights with her.

The marriage was brief. Ali was fatally shot, most likely because of a feud among prison officials. Thanks to the efforts of Ali's parents, Marina was released from Evin, 26 months after her initial arrest. She returned to her own parents' home and soon wed Andre in a Christian church despite a law forbidding her, a supposed Muslim convert, from marrying outside her religion.
The couple arrived in Canada on Aug. 28, 1991. They have two young sons and live in Aurora, near Toronto. And it is from the safety and tranquillity of that suburban home that Nemat wrote her memoir.

Prisoner of Tehran is just now hitting bookstores across Canada. Soon it will be in 16 countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. A British television movie is also in the works. Nemat is writing the screenplay for the prominent London production house, Tiger Aspect.

Nemat is one of the headliners of the eight-day Ottawa International Writers Festival, beginning today at Library and Archives Canada on Wellington Street. The woman who was once simply known by her neighbours as the friendly waitress at a suburban Swiss Chalet is about to become a literary celebrity plus a living symbol of the tens of thousands of political prisoners in post-Shah Iran who were sent to Evin, tortured and, in many cases, executed.

Prisoner of Tehran has been dedicated to various relatives, friends, other political prisoners and the late Zahra Kazemi, the very Canadian woman whose death, Nemat believes, caused the world to take notice, perhaps for the first time, of what was really happening in Iran's prisons.
At the festival, Nemat will be rubbing shoulders with such literary heavyweights as novelists Barbara Gowdy, Rawi Hage, C.S. Richardson and Lawrence Hill, poets Dennis Lee, John Barton, George Bowering and David O'Meara, environmentalist David Suzuki, religion writer Tom Harpur and Ottawa-based social commentator Roy MacGregor...read more

You can order her book by clicking on the picture above or here.

*Watch the movie "A few Simple Shot" about the Iranian Political Prisoners:
by clicking here.

*(Warning: Not for the Squeamish)

Related stories, here and here.

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Friday, March 23, 2007

Iran: Teacher and Journalist Brutally beaten up in Evin Prison

Teachers and Journalist in Evin Prison:

Potkin: Its the Iranian New Year, Nowrooz, and hundreds of Iranian teachers are in Evin prison. They should have spent Nowrooz with their families, around the Haft-Sin table waiting for the exact hour, minute and second when the Spring Equinox takes place. Their children should be thinking of nothing but their new clothes, and their new presents. Yet all they have on their mind is when will Mum or/and Dad come home?

What is the "crime" of Iranian teachers? Why are they in prison? According to the Islamic Republic, they have threatened the national security of the regime by peacefully demonstrating for a better standard of living!! What an insecure regime this Islamic Republic is that its security is so easily threatened. In fact all the teachers have asked for, is the enactment of a public sector pay bill passed by the parliament!

I wish I had time and could translate this article in this Iranian blog:
http://sajjadkhaksari.blogfa.com/
It is written by a reporter who got mixed up with the hundreds of teachers who were arrested. More than 50 plain clothes agents on motor bikes attack the teachers, and the reporter is taken along with the rest of the teachers to an abandoned house, where cleric judges decide who should go to Evin prison in summary trials that lasts a few minutes. He then describes how these ordinary decent people were treated. How men and women, old and young were beaten up and what kind of vulgar insults were hurled at the women teachers. How their headscarfs were pulled off and when the male teachers stood up for their female colleagues, how badly they were beaten up.

The army conscripts seem to be apologetic and sorry. One of them tells the inmates "Please forgive me for what they have made me do to you". But the plain clothes cavemen seem to be from another planet or another age! Everyone is asking "what kind of animals are they? Don't they have wives and kids themselves? Where are they from?"

And it wouldn't surprise me, if one day we find out these cavemen were imports from Iraq. May be Moqtada Sadr's followers who have escaped from Iraq recently.

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Sunday, February 18, 2007

Ahmad Batebi had a Stroke in Evin Prison




Remember him? Ahmad Batebi had a stroke in the infamous Evin Prison and went into coma for 3 hours. He is only 30 years old. To toruture him psychologically they had threatned to transfer him to the criminal and drug addicts section of the prison...He was taken to the clinic in prison but given his grave condition he needs the specialists help outside of the prison.

h/t to Sheema

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Saturday, January 27, 2007

Three women's rights activists arrested in Iran


Sheema: Earlier today I received an e-mail from Omid Habibinia, a Swiss based journalist with the news of Talat Taghinia, Mansoureh Shojaie, and Farnaz Seify, Iranian women activists arrests at the airport. They are taken to Evin Prison.

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