Severe tortures for a crime I had not committed

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan


2021-9-28


At the same date (the year 1351 or 1973) something else happened to me. After reciting the Komeil supplication in al-Reza Mosque on one of the Friday nights, I went home. At that time, we had rented the upper floor of the house of a close friend named Mr. Hossein Ghaderi on Hedayat Street near the al- Reza Mosque. The landlord was a very nice and kind person. The house had two doors; one was opened from other buildings from the yard which was in another alley. At about 11 pm, while we were all asleep, they first knocked on the door of the building we were going and coming, and when Mr. Ghaderi asked them from behind the door, who you were and what you were doing at this time of night, they said, “We are friends of Mr. Dastgheib who have come from Tehran and want to see him immediately.” Mr. Ghaderi became suspicious and did not open the door and said that he was asleep now and come tomorrow. But as soon as he returned to sleep in the room, he saw that several people jumping into the house from the wall in the yard. He rushed to the yard to shout, but they threaten him with a gun to guide them to Dastghib's room.

At that moment, I heard a voice from behind the door calling my name, and at the same time the room’s light turned on. As soon as I got up, I saw some people enter the room. Those who attacked were:

Rezvan (The Deputy Head of SAVAK), Colonel Sultani (Chief of Police Intelligence), Arman (a SAVAK agent who apparently headed operations against religious people), Karami (another SAVAK agent), Zolghadr (a police officer who was notorious for committing crimes). Several others also accompanied them. But most importantly, there was a person who had come from Tehran and was called as doctor, and apparently he was the famous Dr. Kamali who had come to investigate the case of a number of detainees. In short, they started inspecting the house. They searched everywhere. Even one of the officers inspected my infant’s cradle and acted so cruelly in moving the baby that he was thought not to have survived. However, when they found nothing but a few volumes of books, the same doctor became very angry and as he was approaching me, said, "They are very smart, they do not reveal anything." And then he shouted, "Where are you hiding?" And when he did not hear any answer, he wanted to attack savagely, and while he was raising his hand, one of them, who I think was Sultani, apparently called out "Mr. Doctor" prudently, and he turned around and said a few words to each other. Then they said, “You are detained.” When I came down the stairs and saw my wife standing on the stairs with tears in her eyes. For a moment, God strengthened my heart and I told her that I would leave you and the children to God.

Finally, at that time of night, they moved to the police station. We entered a room where the doctor stood behind the desk, took out his pistol and put it on the table. Arman was sitting on a chair at the table. All of a sudden, the doctor shouted, “As you see, this time is different from the previous ones and you have to answer what I ask correctly”. He deliberately pulled something out of the desk drawer and walked back and forth for a few minutes, telling me that a number of leaflets had been obtained from the person who had been arrested and that he had confessed to taking them from you. You just have to say where and by whom they have been sent to you? I said I should see. I looked at some examples of it and saw that they were leaflets with the logo of the so-called Mujahedin-e Khalq (hypocrites), and for this reason I was convinced that they did not belong to me, because in the same circumstances we avoided handing out and publishing leaflets of the group and the like. So I said immediately that these leaflets were definitely not received by me and that if anyone who has claimed this has lied.

As soon as the doctor heard this, he stood up and started shouting and cursing, and as he approached me and yelled, I thought he was drunk because he could smell something bad coming from his mouth. Finally he attacked me and took off my cloak and turban and threw it in a corner, slapping me hard at the same time, and as soon as I covered my face, he punched me hard in the stomach. I put my hand on my stomach, he slapped my face, and repeated the same thing several times, then angrily ordered to close my eyes and I was taken down the stairs. There were many stairs leading to a damp cellar, with a bed in the middle. I was put on the bed. Here, Rezvan, Sultani, Karami and several other agents were present. My hands and feet were tied to the bed and they beat the soles of my feet with a cable. The doctor himself had a device in his hand that he put on the skin of the body and picked it up. It was as if the skin of the body was shrinking and causing severe burning and pain.

In that circumstance, I resorted to Hazrat Zahra (Peace be upon her) and regularly mentioned her name. After a while, the doctor pointed to one of the agents. He left, and after a few minutes, returned with a young man whose face was not very familiar to me, and as I lay on the bed, he stood in front of me and immediately began to speak and said, “He is Seyed Ali Asghar Dastgheib and I sometimes contacted with him on the pretext of Estekhareh (consulting the holy Quran at random to decide one’s procedure) and talks were exchanged. One night after the prayer in al-Reza Mosque, as I went to see him, he asked me to accompany him after leaving the mosque and I did so and we moved toward the Hedayat Four-Way. On the way, he gave me an envelope with leaflets in it and we said goodbye and parted.”  

After this talk, the first thing that came to my mind was that the person would be their own agent and they had taught him to say such a thing so that they might be able to get confessions from me, and in short, this might be a trick. So, I told him immediately, “I don’t know you and what you said is a lie.” The thing which was strange for me was that the issue of contacts on the pretext of Estekhareh between the brothers and me was true and was often carried out. However, here it seemed to me that they knew this and had asked that person to say this way.

At any rate, after he was taken, a very hard situation happened so that i had almost no power. Meanwhile, one of the officers, who hated me a lot and probably his name was Karim, was standing over me and rebuking. He said, "Do you remember what you did to me? Now, if you do not tell the truth, there is everything but death”.

In short, the process of torture continued but suddenly, I saw surprisingly that with the pointing of a person from outside the basement room, all but one of them left, and after a while they returned, followed by the same young man, this time, he began to speak in a very anxious and breathless manner, which I now say, to be honest, the leaflets have nothing to do with him, I have received them from other people. Suddenly, everyone in the room turned to him and asked him to continue. In the meantime, I heard the names of one or two people who had apparently sent leaflets to him from Isfahan. Of course, I did not realize clearly. But After a while, they lifted me up while I could not put my feet on the ground, and my feet did not go inside my shoes. They dragged me up the stairs with difficulty. We entered a room upstairs. I just found out that there was little time left for the Morning Prayer, and thank God I succeeded, although I could hardly say the Morning Prayer, so I was tortured in that basement between 12 midnight till almost sunrise, and my legs were swollen and injured. I was finally released after a few days of detention.

Source: Memoirs of Hojjat al-Eslam Seyed Ali Asghar Dastgheib, compiled by the Center for Islamic Revolution’s Documents, Tehran, Center for Islamic Revolution’s Documents, 1378 (1999), PP. 26-29.



 
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