Abuses in Iran
Journalist Held without Charge in Notorious Tehran Prison
By Ulrike Putz and Mathieu von RohrFariba Pajooh has been held in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison since she was arrested in August, with no access to an attorney. No charges have been filed against the Iranian journalist.
When she received the call from the intelligence service, Fariba Pajooh knew that it didn't bode well for her. We want to talk to you, they told her. It was supposedly just an informational meeting.
The men came to pick her up a few days later, on Aug. 22, the first day of Ramadan. Pajooh had spent the entire day at home with her mother, preparing the evening meal. She only left the house for a short time to buy some sweets. When she returned, she was being accompanied by three men.
The men were polite, says the mother. They spent an hour searching drawers and cupboards and checking the computer. They allowed the mother and daughter to break the fast together. Trembling with fear, the pair ate dates and drank tea. Then the men said that Pajooh had to come with them, but only for an hour. They promised the mother that they would treat her as if she were their own daughter. But they were lying.Harsh Crackdown
Since that day in August, Pajooh, 29, a petite woman with an attractive, girlish face, has been incarcerated in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison, in section 209, which is controlled by the intelligence service. She is one of more than 100 journalists and bloggers the regime ordered arrested in the wake of the widespread protests against the fraudulent elections that brought President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad back into power. But few have been locked up for as long as Pajooh, whose case makes it abundantly clear just how harshly the regime is cracking down on journalists.
In prison, Pajooh is suffering from severe depression and stress-related cardiac arrhythmia. Her parents were not permitted to see her during the first month of her incarceration. Now they are allowed to visit on Mondays, although they are often turned away. Pajooh's current attorney has not been given access to her at all. It was only after Pajooh had been imprisoned for two months that the lawyer even learned of the charges being leveled against her client: initially espionage, followed by "propaganda against the regime."
Pajooh is part of the generation of Iranians who have been striving for freedom since their youth. She was arrested for the first time at 18. She became a journalist, writing for reform-oriented publications, government news agencies and newspapers -- not about politics, but about Iran's social problems.
She was detained a second time in 2008, when she sought to travel to the United States for the presidential election there. When this year's protests against the Iranian regime rocked the country, Pajooh worked around the clock. She also worked as a translator for a Colombian correspondent, which made her even more suspicious to the authorities. She knew that she was in danger, she told friends, but insisted that she only wanted a better future for Iran.
"The pen is the enemy of ignorance," she wrote in her blog, a few days before she was arrested. "My pen is the friendliest of the friendly. I have conspired with my pen."
Demoralizing Conditions
Pajooh spent the first month of her captivity in a "grave," the word Iran's prisoners use to describe the tiny underground cells at Evin Prison, which is almost a city unto itself, hidden behind high walls on a hill above Tehran. She was not kept in any of the wards controlled by the Basij militias, from which reports of torture and rape have reached the outside world. But the loneliness of solitary confinement is demoralizing. Several times a day, the prisoners are taken to interrogations, where they are beaten and subjected to body searches.
After a while, prisoners learn to distinguish among their interrogators, identifying them by their shoes, which they can see despite being blindfolded, and by how aggressive they are. The interrogators berate, threaten and beat the prisoners, and then they try to entice them with the promise of freedom if they agree to confess.
After a month, Pajooh was moved to the above-ground section of the prison, where she shared a cell with another journalist, Hengameh Shahidi. The two women staged a hunger strike at the end of October and were taken to the infirmary after five days. Shahidi was released, but Pajooh was moved to a new cell.
The cell where she is now kept together with a handful of other prisoners is only about 10 square meters (around 100 square feet), with a tiny porthole providing daylight. The temperature drops to freezing at night. Pajooh needs to take eight pills every day: three for her heart, three antidepressants and two sleeping pills.
Empty Promises
Farideh Pajooh, the mother, says that Fariba is still being interrogated daily, sometimes until 11 in the evening. As young as she is, says the mother, her daughter already has a lot of white hairs. Her mental state is very worrying, the mother says.
The mother has spent the last three months going from one government office to the next, where she has heard many empty promises. Human rights organizations have become involved, but nothing has happened. The hearing of evidence was supposedly completed days ago, but a trial date has yet to be set.
Last week, the desperate family staged an eight-hour sit-down strike at the Revolutionary Court. When they were finally allowed to speak with Tehran's chief prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, he told them that he would look into the matter. Another promise.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
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