You’re an Armenian, a Christian, what are YOU doing here? How can a Christian be a communist?
I, Luise Baghramian, was born on July 25, 1959 in Tehran. I was a political prisoner in the Islamic Republic of Iran. I was arrested in November 1981 and spent 15 months in prison.
This statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief. Except where I indicate to the contrary, I make this statement on the basis of facts and matters within my own knowledge. Where the facts and matters are not within my own knowledge, I have identified the source or sources of my information and I believe such facts to be true.
Background
My family moved from Tehran to Esfahan when I was six years old. I finished first grade in Tehran and then studied at Shah Abbas School in Jolfa, Esfahan, which was an Armenian School, through twelfth grade and the obtainment of my high school diploma. In the 1977-78 academic year, I started studying General Languages at Esfahan University and was a student there until early 1981 when higher education institutions were closed.
Before the Revolution I had a friend by the name of Behnam Movahhed who was a member of the Fadaiyan e Khalq Guerilla Organization, through whom I became interested in politics. I was very young then, 15 or 16. Behnam was killed on the street in November 1977. I gradually started leaning toward leftist organizations. When I entered the University I was a supporter of Peykar for a short period but I did not like their interactions and relations because their environment and their beliefs were too restricting for me. Then I became acquainted with Rah e Kargar people and the fact that they were against guerilla tactics was very interesting to me. The argument that we must start social movements and people must participate in these social movements, and their theories in general, were closer to my way of thinking. My inclination toward Rah e Kargar was more of an intellectual nature. They had published three books entitled Fascism which was a very interesting and new concept for me. I saw myself in the middle of that debate and I believed that they were right in saying that the government was a fascist one. Establishing relationships with other members was easier and more peaceful as well.
During the time of the revolution, I always felt like I was on the clouds, like I was flying, like I was not on the ground. I didn't care about breakfast or lunch; I would be out from morning to night and had absolutely no fear. Everything was so exciting and things were happening so fast (and I was very young too) that I kept telling everyone that I felt like I was flying. The only time I got scared, just for a second, was when they announced that the Shah had left [the country]; suddenly I got scared and I don't know why. Maybe I thought that everything was being turned upside down, that things were getting out of control. I don't know what it was but I only remember that moment of fear.
From the start, there was a lot of animosity [between different groups amongst themselves and groups with the government] at the University. For instance, we would put books on display at the entrance and other groups would attack and rip them up. We would put up resistance and participate in various demonstrations, such as those of labor unions, factories, or the University's itself. We organized many such demonstrations which, at times, would be very short-lived because [various groups] would attack, and we would flee. I remember once we were demonstrating on a street where the office of the Laborers Union was located and which ended at the University, when a number of workers attacked and beat our guys. My sister and I hid under a car for a few hours, trying to think what to do. We went into a house where the door had been left open and luckily, the residents were very nice and honorable people. They told us to go to the bedroom and get some sleep until the things had calmed down and the demonstrations were over. I don't quite remember how many hours later (it was dark by then) the man of the house took us in his pick-up truck and dropped us off at our home.
After the revolution, I became a member of one of Rah e Kargar's working committees, and was responsible for a number of committees in Esfahan including the high school and university students' committees. My work was essentially organizing those committees and among my duties were selling newspapers, distributing leaflets, writing mottos, and fundraising, which went on until November 1981. 1980 was when the arrests started; they would arrest our friends and acquaintances, then they would release them. They would beat them, sometimes so badly that they would be near death. The person in charge of Rah-e Kargar in Esfahan was Mahmud Tariqatoleslam who was executed around the same time, and I knew him well. He had been tortured a lot under the Shah' regime and was a wonderful guy. When he was arrested in the Esfahan committee, his mother went to Khomeini, and it was she who told her son that he deserved and should be executed. It was then that the gravity of the situation became sort of more tangible and more real because the Esfahan committee guys were arrested and I knew many of them. One of the guys from the Workers Department, as well as three or four other people I knew, were executed, but other than Mahmud Tariqatoleslam, I don't know their real names.
ARREST
The committee meetings usually took place at our home because our house was very secure due to its location in the Armenian neighborhood. All the neighbors were Armenian and the{Islamic Republic] regime could not exercise much control. At the time, there was a very beautiful girl in our committee by the name of Mitra and she knew where I lived. Four or Five months prior to my arrest, Mitra fell in love with a boy who supported the Fadaiyan e Khalq (Majority) Organization and later joined them. He was arrested a short while later (Esfahan Revolutionary Guards did not really differentiate between [Fadaiyan] Majority and Minority; first they arrested them and once they made their determination in prison, they would release [members of the Majority]) and then Hezbollah had recognized Mitra herself in the street and arrested her. She was a University activist and maybe she was arrested because of her Rah e Kargar affiliation, but I heard later that she was arrested through her boyfriend. Then under beatings and torture, she told them where I lived and came to our house with the Revolutionary Guards.
It was early November and I was home. I had found a job at a Doctor's office because the [Rah e Kargar] Organization had said that it was better if we had a job since it would be a reason to come and go [as usual]; it was my first day at work. It was around 6:30-7:00 o'clock and it was completely dark outside when the doorbell rang. My brother went to the door and came back and said: "Louise, it's for you, it's your friend Mitra." As soon as I opened the door, the Guards walked in behind Mitra, arrest warrant in hand. I don't actually know what kind of order or warrant it was because I didn't -couldn't- read it in the dark, but they had something in their hands. They were armed and told me to put pants on (I was wearing a skirt) and come back. We kept a dog in the house, which, at that point unchained itself and attacked the Guards who got really scared and ran out of the house for a short period. This was great luck for me because Tariqatoleslam's people had brought everything (such as typewriters, printers, a large number of leaflets, etc.) to our house before their arrest. My room was filled with these things, I mean, if they had seen them and then arrested me, I would have been executed right then, even though I wasn't responsible for any of them. The Guards came back in and decided to take me and not come inside the house to search it. I was extremely lucky. And they never came back to search the house. I told my little sister (who was eight or nine years old at the time) right then to call one of my friends to come and take everything away, which they actually did and completely cleared everything away. Of course the Guards themselves didn't think I was a very important person; they were mainly looking for high school and university students and Mitra had told them that she knew me a few months before. The fact is they didn't know the extent of my activities, that is, they knew I had some sort of activity and that it was in connection with Rah e Kargar but they didn't know that after Mitra had left, absolutely everything had changed. My other piece of luck was that I now knew who had actually given me away and I knew the extent of her information.
In any event, the Guards put my other sister and me in their car; my uncle came along but they let him out half way. Mitra was sitting in the middle wearing a chador [the traditional long garb that covers women from head to toe] and I just remember that she took my hand and said "forgive me." I later saw her in prison too.
INTERROGATION AND TORTURE
As we got closer to the Seyyed Khandan neighborhood, which was where the Revolutionary Guards committee was located, they blindfolded us. After a few minutes, they told us to get out of the car. I found myself on grass, a place I later found out was the yard, because you couldn't see or understand anything at that time. They took our blindfolds off and told us to sit on the grass; then they gave us paper and pencil and a guard told me to write everything I knew. I said I had nothing to write to which he replied that I should write that I had nothing to write. I said I hadn't done anything and I had nothing to write. Of course I was very scared; it wasn't as if I thought I was a hero and wasn't afraid. It was dark, there was nothing except cars coming and going in the yard. I had no assessment of the situation, didn't know where I was, and they hadn't talked about anything prior to us getting there. After a few minutes, I don't know if it was 5, or 15 or 30 minutes, he came and took the paper from me and got angry because I hadn't written anything. He blindfolded me, gave me one end of a belt, himself taking the other end and told me to follow him. I took the belt and followed him. I fell a few times too because there were stairs and the path wasn't clear and I didn't know where I was going. He didn't care at all. In fact, I think they did that on purpose to destroy your morale.
He then took me to a room where he sat me on a chair and told me not to open my eyes and not do anything; just sit. There was complete silence for a few minutes. Then some people walked in (I could tell from their footsteps that there were 3 or 4 of them) and stood behind me. As they were standing behind me, they told me to take my blindfold off, which I did. There was a file on the table in front of me. They told me to read the file. I opened the file and realized that the entire Organization had been betrayed. They had drawn up the Organization's chart in a very precise way: The Central committee on top, the University Students' Organization, the High School Students' Organization, and other organizations. I didn't know everyone's name but I knew the people at the top of the Organization. Tariqatoleslam's documents were there, his picture with his wife. By doing this they wanted to show me that everyone had been compromised and scare me into saying everything I knew. I trusted Tariqatoleslam and deep down I knew he hadn't given me away. When I saw the pictures I could tell they had obtained them from his house; plus, others had been arrested, too. I didn't know who had said what but it was clear to me that they didn't have a lot of information on me because my name was not in the file. Armenians in general, weren't there.
The interrogators said: "What do you have to say?"
- I don't know these people.
- You don't?
- No.
And suddenly he hit me over the head with a cable, so hard that my eyes almost popped out. I could see the walls in front of me smeared with blood. They hadn't cleaned up evidence of the beatings on purpose. I said: "I swear to God, I'm nobody."
- Shut up you filth, you slut; she swears to God. Swear to Stalin, swear to Lenin. Why do you swear to God, you piece of shit, you whore? You have nothing to say?
- No, I have nothing to say.
They blindfolded me again and threw me off the chair and proceeded to beat me with a cable. All over my body. They started with the bottom of my feet, then the top, then my knees. As soon as they wounded me in one area, they would move to another. Then they would tell me to get up and walk and when I did, one of them would put his foot (with shoes on) on my bare feet and push. The pain was excruciating, much worse than the cable because your feet swell [due to the extreme pressure.] It was very painful, very bad. They would then tie my feet together and hold them up and beat me, then untie them and tell me to get up. There was something, some machine, I don't know what it was because I only saw it for a second from under my blindfold, to which they had tied my feet. The pain was so bad that I wasn't thinking about anything. Plus, they had stuck a blanket of some kind in my mouth that was full of hair, to keep me from yelling and making noise. They were constantly insulting me: "Talk, bitch. Who the f... do you think you are? We kill hundreds like you, we'll f... you up, and do the same to your mother ..." and they talked to me in this filthy language, and then they continued to beat until I lost consciousness.
When I regained consciousness, I was still in the same place and they started the interrogation again. My feet and mouth were bloody and they had hit me in the face. They had banged my head against the wall twice and it was hurting badly. I also remember that I was thinking more about my eyes than my feet. I thought I was losing my eyes, like they were exploding. I was positive that I had not been betrayed by the Organization and that I had been arrested because of a girl who had absolutely no information. That's why I kept insisting that I had nothing to do with Rah e Kargar people, and that, while at the university, Mitra and I were kind of making ourselves busy with them and that after we were expelled and Mitra left, I had no base and no connection to those people. This insistence helped me a lot because even though they kept threatening me and telling me I was lying, I realized that they had no information about me. That's why I kept resisting and saying I was nobody and had no connection to Rah e Kargar people. Then they said, "Well, since you're not talking, we're going to execute you." To be honest, I was so young, a kid, really, that I had no notion of what execution actually was, whether it was real or not. In any event, they put in a car and started driving around the yard, telling me they were taking to such and such place. Then they got me off the car and told me to write my will. I said that I didn't have a will. And they said: "Shame on you for not having a will." Than they fired a shot in the air and I thought for a second that I was dead and told myself "Well, this is it, I'm gone." And when the interrogator continued to tell me shame on you and other such things, I realized I was alive. It was really like a movie. Things happened so fast that there was not time for me to make decisions. Maybe if it had been a day later, that is if they had postponed things for a day, I would not have been able to resist. I mean, I don't know how long I could last mentally. They took me to a place and threw me out, blindfolded, crying, and in pain, gave me a blanket and told me to go to sleep. I didn't know where I was since I was blindfolded. Then a girl approached me and told me "Don't cry, we're here [with you.]"
Seyyed Khandan Prison and its Conditions
After the Bani Sadr affair in 1981, the government authorities had pretty much arrested anyone they had seen on the street. The conditions in Esfahan were truly catastrophic because they didn't have enough room to keep everybody. The place where I was held for three months was an old house that they said belonged to some Baha'is (I don't know whether that was true or not.) In front of the house there was a long terrace where they had hung a curtain and had separated it from the yard. The rooms were full and some people slept outside. The toilet was at the other end of the yard. I spent the three months of winter in the yard, with no roof or anything else. They gave me a blanket that I had to use under and over me, in other words I had to wrap it around me. The first night I couldn't eat anything because my mouth was full of blood. My eyes were constantly closed and we were not allowed to take the blindfolds off, even in the yard. We were only allowed to take them off at specific times when we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and when we went to the bathroom. There was a specific time for going to the bathroom: before [morning] prayer and again at night before prayer. Even then, we had to line up, two female guards at the head of the line and another one at the end. The rest of the time we were blindfolded. We only had that one blanket and our clothes. Esfahan is relatively dry, so it wasn't that cold during the day, but since it is desert climate, it was cold at night but they didn't care at all. Of course we weren't really that cold either, because every night they would take people away to execute them, and you don't get cold when they're executing people. They would come around 10:30-11 and read the names of some people and would take them away, tens of people. These were the ones who were to be executed; the ones they wanted to transfer to the main prison, they would call in the morning. At night they would take them away to execute them.
Transfer to Dastgerd Prison and the conditions there
I was transferred to Esfahan's Dastgerd Prison after three months. At Dastgerd Prison, every time they arrested one of the Rah e Kargar people, they would take me to them to see if they knew me or not, but no court date was set. In fact, it was only when I was about to be released, that is, about a year and a half later, that I was prosecuted.
Dastgerd Prison was a seventy square meter house and we were 50 or 60 prisoners. The beds were bunk beds and on each bed two people slept, one's head to the other one's toe. Us leftists would sleep on the upper level beds and the Mojahedin would sleep on the lower level bed because they woke up early in the morning to pray and we wanted to sleep. So in order to avoid conflicts we had agreed to that arrangement. Some of them slept on the floor because there were too many of us. The room we stayed in was ours. There was also a yard that had a very big door which opened into the men's prison, which was a real prison from the time of the Shah. There was a large metal door through which you would enter a yard where there was a very large room and next to that was another house reserved for prostitutes. Our yard was the same and there were two bathrooms there. This huge door had a peep hole where we would sometimes look. There was a refrigerator in our room and the food there was good. Once in the beginning, however, they gave us food that caused food poisoning and everyone got sick. Then they closed the doors and proceeded to beat us. We were dying of stomach ache and were screaming. We wanted to go to the bathroom but they wouldn't let us. Anyone who had a plastic bag would throw up in it and we had to go right then and there. After a few hours we started to beat each other up. We were all so sick that no one could stand anybody else. We just screamed. It was really awful. The next day we were all beaten and flogged because we had screamed and made noise. Our theory was (right or wrong) that they gave us bad food to make us sick on purpose in order to weaken us and it is in that context that the flogging afterwards makes sense.
There were a bunch of different people at Dastgerd Prison, great guys too. Many were taken from there to be executed. Some would give others away. For instance, there was one of the Rah e Kargar girls named Vahideh who had been arrested with Tariqatoleslam and had betrayed many of the guys. She was in a very bad mental state. In the morning she would go to various schools with the Revolutionary Guards and when she came back at night she felt really sick, she wanted to throw up, would go crazy, would shiver, cry, hit herself; it was really bad, really bad. I couldn't stand seeing her that way and I would take her in my arms and ask her why she was behaving that way and she would say" "I can't stand it; when I wake up tomorrow I'll become a bad person again." She couldn't sleep at night and when she would become a different person in the morning. She was a very complex person, and we were kids and could not understand how complicated these psychological issues were. In spite of all that, she did not betray me, even though she knew me very well. She used to say that she had undergone great torture such as sticking her head in water and pulling it in and out. To make a long story short, she was really a mess and had severe mental crises. When I was being released, she had some information that she had kept to herself (like they had kept arms in a garden) which she would write on paper and would tell me to learn by heart. She also told me what information she had given away and what she had not. She said: "It wasn't Tariqatoleslam who messed up, it was me. I'm the one who said everything." She also said that there was a laborer by the name of Sa'adat who had betrayed everyone and had said "Once I give everything away, Tariqatoleslam cannot deny it and say that he hadn't done anything." He was the one who compromised everything since they were all in one committee. And me, only my instincts told me who I could and could not trust.
I received a lot of letters and I had to go upstairs to read them because the others did not get letters. Not that there was anything particular in my letters either; mostly just how are you, we're all doing fine, the weather is nice, we all love you and things like that. And they were repeated so often that the guys would say it's like a play, and honestly, if you put the letters next to each other, they were pretty much identical. The reason was that Armenians were not allowed to write in their own language and that's why when they wrote in Farsi, it was quite amusing. One of the funny things that I did was to do the Armenian prayer in Armenian which was very funny to the guys and they would crack up every time.
When you had visitors, they would announce it on the loudspeaker. The first time they called my name I was ridden with anxiety. I didn't know if I was happy or sad and I was wondering what my family would say, what their reaction would be. There was fear too. First, they would open the big door (we had to go through it) then they would put our blindfolds on, then we would go through the men's prison, and then we would get to where they held visitations. By the time I got there it seemed like an eternity. When I got there I started laughing (I laugh when I'm upset): My mother was there, so were my grandmother and my little sister; my father was standing a little further away and was crying like all men do. My mother constantly kept talking. Of course I took advantage and gave all the information I had to my little sister in Armenian. The entire visit lasted about ten minutes. In subsequent visits many friends and relatives showed up. One of my friends who now lives in the U.S. came to visit using my cousin's identity card, who has the last name as I. Another friend, who was also a member of the Organization, came to visit pretending she was my sister! They all took those risks so that we could see each other. It was truly very strange and unbelievable. The guys who were outside didn't seem to be afraid the way they should back in 1982. "Why did you come?" I asked her. "Why shouldn't I?" was the reply! She hadn't even thought about it [the danger;] they didn't have their feet on the ground either, just like me. I had, however, gotten angry she had come. I thought to myself, what if somebody saw her? What was she thinking? I didn't like it one bit, but she had come to see me. It showed a lot of humanity and integrity. I still don't understand it.
Another interesting thing that happened to me while I was there was that, there was a pro-Shah dentist at Dastgerd Prison who had been arrested and subsequently become the prison dentist. I had asked him to summon me every week so I could change some air. He asked me: "What did you do? Armenians are good people." So, he would get me to go there every week. He completely destroyed my teeth. He had, too; otherwise he would not have been able to summon me. And I did not care one bit. Teeth aren't important, are they? Of course not. I so looked forward to being summoned by that dentist every week, for a number of reasons: He himself would give me prison news, plus, in order to get there, I had to go through the men's prison, and they would also give me news of who had been arrested. It was very positive. We would get the information and the news we did not have and I could tell the guys in our prison. There was a sort of excitement there, it was a revolutionary act and you thought you were engaging in a kind of political activity. In other words, the beatings and the torture did not cause me to stop my activities and say to myself "Come on, let it go." I felt that compared to others, I was in heaven; compared to those who were being executed every week, those whose entire families had been executed, or those who had absolutely no future. I had seen and experienced things that going to the dentist [and gathering information] was nothing compared to them. I absolutely did not think I was being heroic. One doesn't think about these things. During the visits with my family, I would give them all the information. I would tell my mother, for instance, to give such and such news to the Mojahedin guys. My younger sister was nine and she would go and give all the information. The people on the outside were under so much pressure at the time that I thought it was better for my sister to save ten lives than for me to save my own skin. And my sister did everything I told her. I would tell her all the names. No one would believe that she had anything to do with anything, so small and skinny she was. Vahideh, for instance, had given me certain information, such as whom they were looking for, or this and that had happened, that I got out through my sister.
One of the customary tortures back then was "family torture." For example, the case of the girls whose children were in prison with them was really bad: They would take their children away from them. There were two Mojahedin members who had really resisted torture in an incredible way, but they broke once they took their children away. That, they could not bear. [The authorities] were great at psychological analysis, their work was calculated and they knew where to hit. Or for example, there was this other girl who was also a member of Mojahedin, named Fereshteh who had a child and was the prison organizer. She was very strong, so much so that she was the leader of the Mojahedin there. Once they took her and her child away for ten days and when they brought her back, she said: "My husband messed up. And I don't want anyone to talk to me anymore." She was not the same person anymore. We never understood what had happened. People would come back and they weren't the same anymore. You could tell from their faces that they had broken down, that they had been broken. They would become completely reclusive and depressed. This was particularly true of Mojahedin because they seemed to quickly find out what had happened and their attitudes would change just as quickly toward the person in question. There were a lot of us leftists but not too many were dictatorial and there was, therefore, no power struggle between us. Of course this was my experience; I did not have a bad experience and I didn't feel that around me either. We still got along well. I think after 1983 everything got tougher, the number of prisoners increased and people started blaming each other. It was not like that at all in our days.
Trial
In early 1983, approximately a year and three months after my arrest, I was tried along with six other people belonging to different groups such as Mojahedin, Peykar, Tudeh, Rah e Kargar. They separated us and took us to a section of the prison where they conducted tribunals and had a number of rooms. They took each of us to a separate room. They took me to a room and told me I could take my blindfold off. It was a normal ten by twelve (feet) room with walls full of slogans. It was obvious the guys who had been there (who were being tried or had left) were trying to communicate information. There was a lot of information there as well as names, along with blood, and it was very interesting that they had not erased hem. Of course it was more slogans than anything else. I don't remember how long I was there, but they called my name, blindfolded me, and took me to another room. After a few minutes, they told me to take my blindfold off. There was a mullah there and a few Revolutionary Guards were standing behind him. This was around the same time that there had been a lot of commotion outside Iran regarding how bad the prisons were and that's why they had sent a bunch of mullahs from Majles (Parliament), I don't know on whose orders, perhaps Montazeri, to inspect prison conditions. The Armenian minority's representative in Majles was a doctor who had put in a good word for me with this mullah and once he had gotten to the prison, he had been told that there is this Armenian girl here who has been forced to do such and such thing, and things of that nature.
In any event the mullah asked me: "What are you doing here? You're an Armenian, a Christian, what are you doing here? How can a Christian be a communist?"
- I don't know, you should ask them.
- Why did they arrest you?
- I don't know, they call me Rah e Kargari [belonging to Rah e Kargar, Rah e Kargar itself meaning "Worker's path.]
- Shame on you. Was there no other path? You should have chosen the husband's path. You should have chosen the husband's path, a girl as beautiful as you. Why would a beautiful lady like you go the worker's path? Was there no other path?
I felt like laughing. He said: "Do you swear you were nobody [in the Organization?]"
- I wasn't.
- Do you swear you're not?
- What kind of swearing?
- The Christian kind.
- Yes, I swear.
Honestly, the entire trial didn't last more than 7 or 8 minutes. They issued a release order that same day and I was freed the next day. There never was any talk of an attorney or things like that, that is, nobody mentioned it, and nobody dared bring it up. If you said such things, they would either slap you or they would take you to the yard and flog you.
Freedom and Leaving Iran
Almost as soon as I was released, I got in touch with the Organization, and was transferred to Tehran. In those circumstances, you either continue, or you completely stop. With everything I had seen I could not do anything in good conscience except continue my work. I worked with Rah e Kargar in different committees for about two years. Life was hard in Tehran; it was of course great compared to prison. But it was hard in the sense that it is very different for a woman to live in hiding than it is for a man. There are many factors involved that you cannot understand until you experience it. When I was released I was constantly laughing. When I talked about torture I was laughing. Everyone said I had lost my mind, but there was nothing I could do but laugh. When I went to relatives and friends homes it was hard because their attitudes were different towards you: You were the last one to go to the bathroom, the last one to eat, there were people who were looking at you and were looking to take advantage of you, of your situation, and of your helplessness. I used to laugh at first but then I stopped laughing because one loses many things [going through these times.]
1984 was the time of the biggest arrests of the Organization and everybody was compromised (including the person in charge of myself and those working under me.) I had nowhere else to go and in late 1984-85, I was forced to flee the country via Kurdistan.
Cellmates who were executed
One of the girls who would really get on the guards' case and argue with them was an interesting girl called Pari Roshani. At night when they would take the guys away and execute them, Pari would say to the guards: "Look sister, look at the sky, how many stars do you see?" And the female guard would respond, for instance, "ten." And Pari would say: "Those are the ten people they executed tonight." The guards wouldn't say anything to her because they liked her. There was a room there called the "death room" because many of the girls they wanted to kill were first kept there for days. Pari had been taken there before execution and from what she told been, it was a very dark and scary place. They would take people in there and would torture them in a way that they didn't last more than two or three days. Then they would get them out and then take them back in. When I first arrived at that yard, Pari had just gotten out of the death room and her entire body and feet were wounded to such a degree that she could only wear a chador. They had beaten her so much that she couldn't wear anything else. She could not put pants on, she could not attach anything to herself. Her whole body was injured. She just kept saying: "It's really bad in there, really bad." I still don't what kind of room it was, but the majority of the people who went in there were executed. They were under pressure to provide information but the guys would not give them any. Pari, for instance, said she had information but would not tell them.
There was a 15 year old girl in there that I knew who was executed by the name of Zahra who had been arrested because her brother was a member of the Mojahedin Organization. She herself did not belong to any group. They had tortured and beaten her to reveal where her brother was living and she had said that she knew but would not tell them, that she knew the address but would not reveal it to them. She told me: "I know where he is but out of spite, I wanted to tell them that I know but I won't tell you." They killed her for this very reason.
There was a beautiful Kurdish girl named Tahereh who was a member of Mojahedin and who been beaten so badly that there were holes in his feet. They had killed all of her family in front of her and she had gone crazy. In spite of that, she didn't say anything. She would sleep next to me in the back room, rosary in hand, and would talk and talk. She would not talk to the Mojahedin and would say that she would only talk to Armenians. They had beaten her so much and she had lost so much weight that her hands would come out of her cuffs. But despite all of that, she was constantly thinking about escaping; for instance she would climb up the wall. She was just a phenomenon and had so much energy it was incredible. She was very young, around 23-24 years old. I knew she would be executed and she was. I saw her name and picture once in a Mojahedin book.
There was also another girl, also Mojahedin, by the name of Mansoureh Omoumi who was a sweetheart as well. Mansoureh had a very beautiful voice and would sing every afternoon. When she sang the entire prison would shake. The night they came to take her away for execution she started singing and they took her away as her voice could be heard by the whole prison.
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