By Mojtaba Samienejad
I witnessed the prison status quo; a status quo which had become naked and was showing me its hard and dirty reality. As a prisoner I had to see it. I had to feel it with all my being – the status quo that meant the bitter cold of the prison cell; the paranoia which the solitary confinement brought about; and the beatings and insults during the interrogation. I felt all of it under my skin and inside my bones.
These lines were written by Mohammad Poor-Abdolah, a student who has been sentenced to 6 years in prison after being held for 10 months on a temporary detention order. He has been sentenced to spend 6 years of his life inside the cells of Ghezel-Hesar prison among violent convicts.
Poor-Abdolah was born in Tehran in 1984. He entered Tehran University in 2002 as a chemical sciences student. Entering university is always the start of an awakening for students. So, Mohammad, like thousands of other students, woke up and claIMG_4119imed the sorrows of Iran as his own, demanding freedom and equality for all. He started his activities and became involved in university publications. And finally in 2007 he entered a university that has become the final destination for all student activists: Evin University.
On the anniversary of his arrest, Mohammad wrote:
I left for the big university; a university where there were more than 200 classrooms and an unknown number of students; where there were only a few professors and they were called “experts.” The students were not allowed to be distracted, since the curriculum was quite heavy and needed focus. An educational instrument called “the blindfold” was used to stop the curious students’ eyes from peeking and wandering around. If a student did not listen to the lesson of the day, the professor would first write it on his own hand and slap it into the student’s face. Before they had entered the university, the students had caused mischief together. In this university, however, they were held in solitary classrooms. This gave them more time to think and focus on the lesson of the day. Books, newspapers and media were considered to be a nuisance to the educational process and therefore banned.
One month after Mohammad wrote those lines, he was taken back to the classrooms of Evin University. He was arrested on February 14th, 2009 and was kept in solitary confinement for the first 30 days. This time, his detention had many ifs and buts attached. Before this new arrest Mohammad was supposed to be tried, first in September 2008, and then in December 2008. On both times, the court was postponed, and a new hearing was scheduled for February 20th, 2009. 6 days before the trial date, Mohammad was arrested, and, on the day of his trial, he was in a solitary cell in Evin prison.
One night before the Persian new year (March 21st, 2009), Mohammad was transferred to Ghezel-Hesar Prison in Karaj. The same night that Omid-Reza Siyafi died in Evin and left us forever. Ghezel-Hesar is where all the violent convicts are kept, including the bandits, drug dealers, rapists and murderers. The inmates who have the lightest sentences are those who have been convicted of selling, buying or drinking alcohol. As the Ghezel-Hesar inmates say, drugs have been a part of the prison since day one. If Ghezel-Hesar were a rug, shaking it would release many kilograms of various drugs. There are drugs everywhere; on the walls, the doors, everywhere.
Let me give you some statistics from the time I spent 2 months in Ghezel-Hesar, where I was detained in Hall 5 of Ward 3. Of the 121 inmates detained there, 109 were using drugs. Of those, half were addicted to crack. From what I heard, Mohammad was kept in the same Ward this summer. I was taken to the same Hall as him. The Hall was reserved for violent convicts, and it was also used as a place of exile for the inmates, when requested by the interrogators. I don’t know if it still has the same functions.
The Mohammad of our sad story was taken back to Evin 2 months later to sign his interrogation papers. Our hero again refused to comply. The judge in charge of his case had said that, since Mohammad refused to sign on to his initial interrogation findings, he would be taken back to solitary in order to be interrogated again. Faced with Mohammad’s defiance, they took him back to Ghezel-Hesar, where he remains detained.
Mohammad has been denied due process and a speedy trial; he was held for 10 months and was denied release on bail. Finally on Monday October 12th, 2009, a court presided over by judge Salavati heard the case against Mohammad. He was brought in before the court in hand and ankle cuffs, as required by Ghezel-Hesar regulations. Mohammad’s mother has said, “They brought in a 23 year old young man with his hand cuffed to another prisoner who was a 70 year old addict. There were empty chairs in the courtroom, but they were not allowed to sit on them. Instead they had to sit on the floor. Why? Are they not human beings? (Later, I will write an article on how law enforcement and judiciary officers conduct themselves in the revolutionary courts and Ghezel-Hesar prison.
The puzzle that started 10 months ago for Mohammad comes to an end with a 6 year prison sentence based on articles 500 and 610 of the penal code. It is a saga that will continue until the day he is freed from that prison.
Article 610 designates “assembly or conspiracy by a group of more than two persons against the domestic or international security of the nation or commissioning such acts” as a crime punishable by 2 to 5 years of imprisonment. Mohammad got the maximum 5 years set by the law.
Article 500 of the same law sets a sentence of 3 months to 1 year of imprisonment for anyone found guilty of “in any way advertising against the order of the Islamic Republic of Iran or advertising for the benefit of groups or institutions against the order.” Here, too, Mohammad got the maximum punishment, which is a 1 year jail term.
But we all know that these are all lies and deceptions. Mohammad wrote, “Here is how to remain focused if detained in Evin”:
Draw lines on the wall to keep track of the days;
Make a solar clock to keep track of the time;
When in your cell, pay attention to the sound of the guards’ slippers so as to remain alert for the exam times, because in this university, like all other universities, professors lie
his right ear, applying continous pressure to the blood vessel that leads to the
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