Recalling his three-month ordeal in prison in Iran, journalist Maziar Bahari tells Jon Snow how he was threatened with execution, tortured regularly, and repeatedly quizzed about his sexual relationships.
The Newsweek journalist has in the past worked on assignment for Channel 4 News. In June he was arrested at his home in Tehran, caught up in the crackdown which followed the disputed presidential elections.
After an international campaign to secure his freedom he was released suddenly, 118 days after he was first detained.
Now back in Britain, with his partner and newborn child, Maziar Bahari has been speaking about his ordeal inside Iran’s notorious Evin jail.
He told Jon Snow: “It was 7.45 in the morning. I was asleep at my mother’s house and I think I could smell some strangers in the house.
“I smelled a mixture of rosewater and sweat, which is a typical smell of the Iranian officials.
“My mother came in and said ‘there are four people who say they are from the prosecutor’s office and they want to take you away’.”
“These four people were led by a large man with a massive head and thick glasses, who I called Mr Rosewater. They searched the house and confiscated some of my tapes and some of my cameras and my laptops and some documents.
“They put me in a car in a blindfold and drove north. I asked one of the people in the car of we were going to Evin prison and he said ‘maybe we do maybe we do not’.
“Evin prison was established in the Shah’s time and it it synonymous with torture, perished lives, broken limbs, pulled nails. It is hell basically.
“There were three sentences on the wall of my cell, scribbled by other prisoners: ‘God I repent’, ‘please help me God’ and ‘God have mercy on me’.
“There was no toilet or bed in my cell. They gave me two blankets and I had to use one of them as my mattress and the other as my blanket.
“They also gave me a book of prayers and a copy of the Koran and within half an hour they took me to the interrogation room and put a blindfold on me.
“I could smell and hear Mr Rosewater and I asked him why I was there and he said I was a mastermind of the western media in Iran and they thought I was working for four intelligence agencies: Israeli Mossad, British MI6, the American CIA and Newsweek.
“He told me the magazine Newsweek was part of the intelligence apparatus and he said I was spying for them and all the western media were getting their orders from me.
“There and then I knew they had a scenario for me.
“Mr Rosewater looked like the boss and he was obsessed with sex, which is a sign of many ideological in Iran and around the world, but especially in Iran and among the Revolutionary Guards.
“For a month he was asking me about my sex life and what he was imagining in his head. He was going through all the female names in my mobile phone, on my Facebook account and my email addresses and asking me one by one whether I had had sex with them.
“Of course there was some physical torture. He beat me, hit me with a belt, punched and kicked me but to me the scarier parts were these conversations because I could see he had a very wrong view of the world.
“Like everybody else, Mr Rosewater spoke to his family while he was at work. One day it was his wedding anniversary and his wife called and was obviously complaining that he was not at home with her.
“He was very loving on the phone to her and he was twisting my ears at the same time.
“He said: ‘I’m so sorry that I cannot be there tonight but I will make sure that I will finish this guy’ and then he slapped me in the head.
“Then he continued: ‘This week so we can celebrate our wedding anniversary next week.’”
Source: Channel 4 News
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