In continuation of the series of conversations that took place in the “Face to Face” section of the monthly magazine “Peace Line” with torture victims, especially victims of white torture, in prisons; this month, we went to “Farahnaz Fardousi”, a Baha’i citizen who spent some time in prison in the 1960s.

Farān Ferdowsi was born in Esfand month of 1331 in a Bahá’í family in Tehran. He has one sister and three brothers. In 1352, he went to the United States to continue his studies and returned to Iran in Bahman 57, one year before the revolution, after graduating in management and accounting. Mr. Ferdowsi was arrested by security forces less than three years after the revolution, in Aban month of 1360, and spent some time in temporary detention.

Farān Ferdowsi, whose father, Fathullah Ferdowsi, was executed during that time in Evin Prison, says that all that time, like scenes from a movie, have remained in his mind.

He speaks about his arrest as follows: “My father was a member of the Tehran spiritual assembly and was arrested in November 1982 during a meeting. At that time, any Baha’i citizen who was identified would be arrested and in many cases, some would go missing and no one knew where they were. In order to at least know where my father and other friends were, after hearing about the arrest, I started to follow up and went to different police stations, committees and prisons. While I was searching for them, in a committee that was right in front of the house where they were arrested, during questioning, one of the officers asked me, ‘Are you a Baha’i?’ and as soon as I confirmed, I was arrested and taken to the same place where my father and other members of the assembly were imprisoned.”

Mr. Ferdowsi, in response to the question of which prison he was transferred to, says: “This was not a prison; it was an old and large garden on the old Shemiran road, near the Russian embassy – an old private villa that I do not know who it belonged to – that they had turned into a prison. At the end of the garden, they had built small cells and used the residential part as the prison office and interrogation room. This place was apparently created for drug addicts, whose numbers reached 300-400 and had been there for a long time. Apart from them, there were also 10-15 members or supporters of the Mujahedin organization and the ten of us, including the caretaker of the house and his wife and child who had been arrested, making a total of thirteen, were also imprisoned there. We never understood why this small number of Mujahedin and us were taken there; perhaps they wanted to humiliate us.”

He continues: “There were eleven men in one room (cell) where we would sleep with one door in the middle and we would sleep on our sides, unable to move or turn over. On the other side, they had only given us a thin military blanket to put under us and on the cement floor, and if we had a coat, we would put it over our heads. This was in a situation where the cell windows were also without glass, and imagine that with the cold northern air of Tehran, in that season of the year, we were practically sleeping outside and on the ground. Additionally, our cell did not have a toilet and they would only open the door once in the morning at 6 and once in the afternoon for us to use the toilet, and for example, one of our friends who had to go to the toilet more often due to illness, they would not open the door for him no matter how much he begged.”

Faran Ferdowsi describes the behaviors of security officials during their interrogations as follows: “On the second or third day of our interrogations, all day long, they would close our eyes and take us out to the courtyard or the veranda – which was sometimes wet due to rain. During this time, with our eyes closed, anyone who passed by would kick and curse at us. The interrogation process was also such that they would come every hour, open our eyes, give us a piece of paper and say, ‘Write your name.’ After we wrote our names, they would close our eyes again and come back an hour later, this time asking for our address. As we wrote our address, we would sit on the ground for an hour and be kicked, cursed at, and hit. An hour later, they would come back and ask, for example, ‘Where do you work?’ and this process would continue until we were taken back to our cells at night… Meaning,

Mr. Ferdowsi continues: “One day, two guards came and made a bet on whether we would insult our religion or not. The guard who had made the bet forced us to do so, and after the bet, he brought a blue pipe and started hitting us. Everyone’s eyes were closed and he hit all parts of our bodies, even our heads and faces. For example, he hit me in a way that the bruises remained for six months even after our release.”

I ask him what his accusation was: “One day, as they were reading names one by one and placing each person’s file in front of them, a person named “Haji Talooei” who was in charge there and was one of those we later heard were strongly against the Baha’is, when he reached my file which had “Farhan” written on it, he realized that there was no accusation in that file; he asked one of the officers, “Why did you take this one!?” The officer replied, “He had come looking for his father!” and ordered them to write on the file: “Logistics officer”! Meaning that I, who had only gone to the committee to inquire about my father’s situation, had become a logistics officer! This was the crime they mentioned for me…”.

This Baha’i citizen talks about the mental abuse he experienced during his detention: “They would insult and humiliate me. But one day, they came and told us to start writing our wills because the Attorney General has issued a death sentence for all of us… There was also a shop where prisoners could buy basic things like plates, spoons, forks, or soap, but they wouldn’t let us go to the shop. Meanwhile, they only gave us one spoon and one bowl for our meals in the entire cell. For example, one day at lunch when they brought us watery meat and poured it into the same bowl, 10 people had to eat that meal with the same spoon!”

He adds, “Although our cell was small and we had limited space, we were still there. They took us to the cell for drug prisoners for two or three days; a place where about 200-250 people were in one hall and we couldn’t even sit down. We stood on our feet from morning until night, waiting for someone to be called so we could sit for a few minutes. The conditions there were extremely bad. You may not believe it, but one day an elderly man, around 70-80 years old and addicted, collapsed from extreme exhaustion on the ground. Due to the overcrowding and lack of space, four people fell on top of him and no one could do anything. That old man died from the pressure. The guards came in the morning and took his body away. When we went to that hall, it was packed with people. Well, these people couldn’t control themselves and since there was no toilet in the cell, they sometimes did their business

When I ask Mr. Ferdowsi if the mental tortures he endured during his detention have had any long-term or short-term effects on him, he laughs and says, “Of course it had an impact. Even though it has been thirty-some years since that time, there hasn’t been a day when those memories don’t play like scenes from a movie in my mind; meaning that those days are always with me. My wife has often said that you are a different person before and after going to prison. At her request, I even went to a psychologist for help.”

“I completely understand the soldiers of the Vietnam War who cry when even the smallest mention of the war or their lost friends is brought up, even after forty years.”

In response to whether they were insulted for their religion in prison, he said: “The painful issue that had become normal for us due to its repetition was exactly this. For example, when we wanted to go to the bathroom, they would take all the prisoners from the yard to their rooms and say that they are impure, do not talk to them and do not get close to them. Or for example, during the time they took us to the crowded cell of drug addicts, they assigned one prisoner to be responsible for us and keep us in a corner, so we wouldn’t have contact with other prisoners. And in the mornings when they took us out of the cell blindfolded for interrogation, they would tell us to put our hands on each other’s shoulders (form a line) and the guards would give the first person a stick or a piece of cloth so they wouldn’t hold our hands and they would lead us to the hall where the interrogation took place; so that their

“When we were beaten in front of each other, it was very impactful. The drug prisoners who were whipped 80-90 times every day at around 12 o’clock, and we saw it. Another very painful thing we witnessed was when after 4-5 days, they realized that the husband, wife, and their 12-year-old son – who I said were the Baha’i caretakers and were taken with the rest – were the only ones left and even didn’t participate in the sessions and were actually useless, they decided to release them; without any trial, they said they had to receive 50 lashes each before their release. The head of the women’s section also warned that this woman was in her menstrual period and shouldn’t be whipped, but they changed the sentence right then and there to 10 lashes for the woman and 40 for her husband! And then they made the three of them lie on the ground in front of us and started whipping them. That was

This former political prisoner, after a while, was transferred to Evin prison by his father and the remaining Baha’is who were imprisoned there (9 people). He was temporarily released on bail and several guarantees, including a property deed and a signed blank check.

I ask Mr. Faran Ferdowsi when his father was executed: “Well, we were together and two months after they released me and took the rest to Evin, my father was executed in Evin prison. In fact, one day they contacted our house from Evin and only said, “We have understood these things” and hung up the phone. We followed up on the matter and talked to the others, and we realized that others had also received such messages. Then gradually they came to seize and confiscate our house, and it took one or two days for us to find out through friends and acquaintances that they had buried those 9 people in a place called Kafarabad (Khavaran) at that time, and they did not give us any bodies or signs.”