Teach the Servant of the Mosque

Compiled by: Islamic Revolutionary Website
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2023-12-7

One of SAVAK's tricks was to crush the comrades’ resistance in any way and invite them to cooperate with him; both with violence and intimacy. One day I was also invited to work. It was eight o'clock in the morning. When I entered the door, the interrogator was sitting and got up to respect me and said: "Hello, Haj Agha. are you all right? God willing, I'm sorry that you had a bad time during this time. we were really sad, they brought you here for nothing, you are an honorable man. You are not anti-nation and anti-Iran at all!"

In short, he spoke for a long time, in such a way that one believed that these are really good people and they were not the ones who tortured us before! Then he said: "I wanted to ask you a religious issue?" You are a cleric and seminary student, you live in a pious family, so I wanted to ask you a religious question."

I said: "Come on."

He said: "Suppose, you are standing in front of Faiziyah School, four people come and kill two people and then run away. Then they arrest four others by mistake and want to take them and execute them instead, and you know that the murderers are other people. Aren't you obligated to say that those arrested are innocent?"

I said: "What do you mean by these words?"

He said: "Tell me if you are legally obligated or not?"

I said: "We should see how the situation is?" Where did this incident happen and does my testimony have an effect or not?"

He said: "Now some people in this country are against His Majesty, they are against religion, they are against God and the Prophet, and they are communists. We expect you to introduce us those who are innocent among those who are arrested. We give you a phone number, you call us and say this one is innocent, that one is guilty, this one has been spreading communist leaflets."

I denied these words. My father had told me many times: "Be careful that they don't ask you for a promise."

I said: "I have nothing to say, but I have a problem, the problem is that my mouth is loose." I may promise you cooperation now, then when I go to the street, I will tell people that I have become a member of SAVAK!

He suddenly got angry. The same man who talked to me lovingly for three hours, slapped me hard on my ear, then punched me in the temple and I lost consciousness. After we sat for a while, he became kind again and it was as if the tape had been put in the recorder from the beginning. He said: "Cooperate, it is good for you and your religion." You will go to heaven in the hereafter! The country must be preserved by you!"

I said, "Sir, I am not cooperating."

He said: "Sir, don't you say that Imam Hussain (PBUH) was oppressed, well, some people are taken for granted and mistaken." You, who are in the mosque, know who has brought a declaration and who has not."

"I don't know," I said.

"Why? you know," said he.

I said, "Those who distribute leaflets do not do so publicly at all. They come to the mosque and put the notices under the Mufatih or Qurans, but they don't give them to us. Many times in the mosque, when I opened the Quran or Mufatih to read, I saw that they had posted a notice there. I have no access to where these announcements are coming from. "Unless the person who distributes the leaflets comes and says that I am doing this."

He said: "Teach the servant of the mosque to follow up on these issues."

I said: "We have a servant in our mosque who is a Turk and is seventy years old. He doesn't know the difference between a door and a wall at all, he can't speak Farsi, he's so bad-tempered that children don't come to the mosque because of his fear. What should I say to such a servant?"

He said: "Tell the servant to cooperate with us."

I said: "Call and tell yourself."

They talked to me like this for three days. During these three days, they gave me good food and brought me a large amount of leafy kebabs and chickens. They did not allow us to say that we will cooperate and then keep our promise. As soon as we took a step back, they would take a few steps forward and use this small promise as a reason to humiliate the person and quickly advertise that so and so is cooperating with us. They talked to me three or four times. Three people interrogated me and each of them played a role. Once one of them got up and hit me in the face so hard that my glasses broke on my face. He said: "This is not going to be someone's mother." Then he hit me again, I fell down and got a head injury.

They took me to the hospital and bandaged my head. In these interrogations, one of them used to beat them and the other treated them with kindness. And he said: "Excuse me! There has been a mistake; this gentleman who hit you is basically a dirty person. Sit down, I am your friend."

Source: Memoirs of Hojjat-ul-Islam Hadi Ghaffari, The Bureau of Islamic Revolution Literature, Volume 1, Tehran, Hozha Haneri, 1995, pp. 93-96.