An exhibition in prison

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevisan

2023-6-28

I had been living secretly for some time [Masoud Sotoudeh], one night I decided to go to my father's house. It was 1:30 a.m. when I slowly and carefully jumped over the wall of the house into the yard. I was so tired that I fell asleep in a corner of the yard. I suddenly woke up with a loud noise. It was still dark. The sound was heard from the house next door to our wall. I looked at the clock. It was 5:30 a.m. I listened carefully to the noises, and after a bit of attention, I realized that the SAVAK agents had come to arrest me, but by mistake they had climbed over the neighbor's wall and entered his house. Our neighbor was a cautious person, so he guided them to our house. I could hear everything. I had no way to escape. In less than 2 minutes, more than ten special armed agents entered the house through the door and wall.

One of the agents, who had a strong and agile body, came towards me with a jump and arrested me in the blink of an eye. Later, I found out that the agent was known as spring among his colleagues. He really worth the name. With the noises, my family woke up and came to the yard. Seeing the bracelets on my hands, my mother started protesting. The “spring” rudely slapped my mother's face. When he faced my strong protest, his pride was wounded and hit the wall with his fist in frustration. The blow was so strong that its trace remained on the wall for a long time. They searched inside the house. After searching, they discovered a large number of Imam's leaflets, duplicating devices, various religious books, explosives and 38 pieces of dynamite. An officer was cataloging. In the end, 126 documents were confiscated and recorded in my file.

I was taken to Evin Prison on 5^th of Azar 1353 (November 26, 1974). A few days my arrest, Mehdi Moeenfar, who was an active member of our group, was also arrested and brought to Evin. After some time, they set up an exhibition in Evin prison with 126 items of illegal items and documents they found in our house. It was interesting that they had chosen a lot of fake documents according to their taste and added them to my documents. According to a plan, they prepared a documentary program by inviting journalists from the Radio and Television Organization. In this program, while showing the discovered items on TV, a person named Sabeti, who was one of the heads of SAVAK, gave explanations and introduced me and Moeenfar as the leaders of a famous Islamic Marxist group, and pictures of the two of us were also broadcast. In his explanations, Sabeti said, “These two are leaders of a group called Islamic Marxists, who, along with drug trafficking, engaged in subversive activities against the monarchy and thereby led the youth astray. This radio and television program was broadcasted without any interview with us and only a picture of me and Moeenfar was shown.

Source: Saeed Ghiasian, Memoirs from Prison, A selection of the unsaid stories of political prisoners of the Pahlavi regime, Tehran, Sooreh Mehr, 1388 (2009), pp. 67-69.