The 360th Night of Memory

Compiled by: Leila Rostami
Translated by: Fazel Shirzad

2024-12-4

Note: The 360th Night of Memory, titled "Memorial of Strange Martyrs in Captivity," was held in memory of 12 strange martyrs from Tehran Province on September 22^nd of 2204, in the Soura Hall of the Islamic Revolution Art Center. In this program, Colonel Mojtaba Jafari, Mohammad Javad Zomordian, and Engineer Saeed Ohadi shared their memories. The performance of this Night of Remembrance was led by Davood Salehi.

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The first narrator of the Night of Memory, Colonel Mojtaba Jafari, was born in 1960. He was 19 years old when he entered the officer academy. He continuously appeared on the fronts from 1983 to 1988; he was captured for the last 2 years of the war. There were six brothers, one of whom was a guard and went to the front for three years at the very beginning, but was injured and returned. The second brother volunteered to go to the front at the beginning of the war and the third brother after the Karbala 5 operation. The fourth brother was martyred in the Wal-Fajr 8 operation and the other two brothers, one of whom was the narrator of this program, served in the Islamic Republic of Iran Army. These two brothers were captured together and both are free. The narrator of the program is the author of the book “The Hell of Tikrit”. At the beginning of his speech, the narrator said a memory from Colonel Shushtari: There were 30-40 of us when they captured us. They tied our hands behind our backs and gathered us in an area until a truck or van came and took us behind the enemy front. An Iraqi helicopter landed 200 meters from us. Two people jumped down and came towards us. They randomly selected 2 soldiers from among us and took them to the helicopter with them. Colonel Shushtari said: “I said to myself, ‘If a person is captured, it’s good to take him behind the enemy front in a helicopter like this.’ "Now that we are sitting here, we may be hit by both our own bullets and the enemy's." They put them in a helicopter. The helicopter flew about 150-200 meters above the ground. They opened the helicopter door and threw the two soldiers down, and they were torn to pieces in front of our eyes. We don't know if anyone found any traces or bodies of them. The narrator continued: Colonel Jafar Rajabi, who is tall and tall, was telling us: They captured us in the Karbala 6 operation. They tied our hands and said: "Go down this road to Column 1 until you reach a place where a truck or van will come and take you." As we were leaving, we heard gunfire. We looked and saw one of the children lying on the ground, writhing in blood. The Iraqis also did not allow anyone to touch him. I said to myself, this is not a scene of conflict or mines! How could someone fall like that! I was tall. I looked and saw two Iraqi soldiers sitting on a hill and making a bet. For example, when this column of Iranian prisoners of war goes by, you can hit the tall one! You can hit the fat one! This is how our children were martyred. Strange martyrs, they are truly strange martyrs. The narrator added: They took us to Camp 19 in Tikrit. There were 400 Iranian officers missing in action. We had no contact with our families. Our families did not know whether my brother and I were wounded, martyred, or alive! We did not know about our families either. There was a helicopter pilot named Parviz Toloei who had lost his teeth in Iraq. We went and talked to the Iraqis, saying that even a person with healthy teeth cannot eat your "Samoon" bread. How can this servant of God who has no teeth eat this bread?! They said: "What should we do?" We said: "Well, take him and put a set of teeth in him. We left 5,620 artificial teeth for the Iraqi prisoners in Iran. At least you take one, and later we will tell future generations that the Iraqis gave him a set of artificial teeth." They said: "Okay! He will go to the hospital tomorrow morning." When he said he would go to the hospital tomorrow morning, we sat in the nursing home at night and opened the top layer of his cotton. We wrote the addresses and phone numbers of 400 Iranian officers on a white sheet under the newspapers. We placed it inside the cotton sheet and sewed the cotton sheet.

He monitored it and went to the hospital. Then the doctor explained, examined me and said: “In order to take a cast, you have to keep coming back to the camp and back, and this is difficult and dangerous for us. You have to stay in this hospital.” He said: I said: “I am a prisoner, whatever you say.” When he came out of the doctor’s office, an Iraqi soldier who was standing there asked him: “Have you seen a cross?” He didn’t understand either and he nodded his head in confirmation. So he sent him to a room for registered prisoners who were going through their recovery period. There they talked to the patients about who you are? Who are we? He said: “We are Camp 19 of Tikrit.” He opened a box and gave the prisoners the names of 400 Iranian prisoners.

They went to their camps. One of them was in Camp 5 in Tikrit. At night, when they sit together, they say, "Sir, we are reading these names. Anyone who knows these names should tell us to write a letter to their families that they are alive." They read Mojtaba Jafari and Mohsen Jafari. One raises his hand and says, "I know these people. These are the forces from Varamin." Then they ask, "Who is from Varamin here?" Two people raise their hands. One is the pilot Ahmad Vaziri, the other is the martyr Hassan Hadavand Mirzaei. These two people secretly write a letter to the leader, telling him that Mohsen and Mojtaba are alive." Pilot Ahmad Vaziri returned, but Hassan Hadavand Mirzaei, like all the freedmen who returned to their homeland in 1980, was ready for his release when he was taken out of the camp at night and tortured until he was martyred. A more bizarre testimony is not possible; because the prisoner was registered and his family was waiting for him. In the morning, his body was brought into the camp. On his photo was written: “The prisoner, the Iranian, the deceased, Hassan, son of Aghagol Mirzaei.” The prisoners of the camp were forced to sign that the condition for your freedom was that you had to sign that the martyr Hassan Hadavand Mirzaei had died of natural causes. Those who had signed told me that we signed so that we could be released. In 2003, when the last of our prisoners arrived, an Iraqi officer gave an address saying that he knew an Iranian prisoner who was buried in such and such a place. Go and exhume his body and deliver it to Iran. They would deliver it to Mehrabad Airport. I was the head of the Army Ground Force Veterans and sent Colonel Ahmad Heydari there as a representative. The sentences I am saying were said by the representative of the Martyr Foundation. The Colonel said: "I went to see if what the Iraqis sent was not a handful of bones, but something they had given us as a martyr. I removed the plastic wrap from this martyr and it occurred to me that if no one knew that this person had passed away, they would think that he was sleeping! And if they knew that he had passed away, they would say that he had been dead for 48 hours!" This was what the representative of the Martyr's Foundation told Colonel Ahmad Heydari. He also told me that I ran my hand over the face of this martyr. I felt the softness, tenderness, and warmth of the skin of this martyr's face.

To be continued...