They flogged me with cables and crushed my testicles

In a letter to Tehran’s Chief Prosecutor Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi, Gholamhossein Arshi, one of the protesters detained during the Ashura protests on 27 December 2009, has provided a detailed account of how he was tortured and abused throughout his time in prison.

A month after he took part in protests on the holy day of Ashura, Arshi was identified and subsequently arrested with the aid of video footage taken by the Iranian police forces who were present at the scene of the demonstrations.

The 31-year-old was later sentenced to four years in prison by branch 15 of the Revolutionary Court presided by judge Salavati, which was later reduced to a year in prison following appeal. Until now, Arshi has served eleven months of his one-year jail-term and has not been granted leave.

In his letter to Jafari-Dolatabadi, which was published by the Kaleme website affiliated with opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, Arshi writes that after his picture circulated in websites and newspapers belonging to the Iranian police as well as the Revolutionary Guards (such as Gerdab.ir) he was arrested at his home by eight police officers and interrogated for ten days before being handed over to the infamous Evin prison.

He explains that he was severely beaten and assaulted both physically and verbally by interrogators who had tried to force him into confessing to having burned police cars and vandalising public property during Ashura demonstrations.

The letter describes his ordeal while in detention, explaining to the Chief Prosecutor, “At this stage, they tied my hands tied to a chair using a metallic handcuff and began to attack me with a cable in such a way that until months, marks of flogging with cables and wires were still on my arms and legs, something my cellmates have also attested to. In order to force me into confessing to something I had never done—i.e. setting police cars on fire—the interrogators didn’t stop at flogging me with cable and wire, but brutally crushed my testicles while they spread my legs as my hands were tied; to the point that I shrieked in agony and out of weakness. The answer to my pleading was only insults [directed at my family].”

Arshi says that after he urged the interrogators to cease their abusive and brutal mistreatment, he was told, “we are the ones who will decide for you, not God!”

The young prisoner say that he had informed judges Asadi (5th Branch of the Tehran Court) and judge Salavati (15th branch of the Revolutionary Court) about the his ordeals in prison, but both officials ignored Arshi’s pleas regarding torture.

“By writing this letter to you, I intend nothing but to inform the citizens of this country of the mistreatments of the post-election protesters by the so called security officials and the unjust decisions made by the judiciary with respect to the Ashura detainees and the events that followed the disputed 2009 presidential elections. Other detainees and I know that no one in the Judiciary is going to look into our current condition or what we've suffered. This has been proven to us in past months by you and your other colleagues [in the judiciary].”

Arshi has been accused of “assembly” and “collusion” for acting against “national security.” He strongly denies the charges and says, “my only crime on Ashura was preventing harm to the agents of the Islamic Republic who were being punished at the hands of the Iranian people for their violent behaviour, but were saved by me and others like me, pardoned by the compassionate people of this land. My four-year sentence is probably for having saved an agent of the Islamic Republic!”

Gholamhossein Arshi is currently being held in Evin prison and was among the seventeen prisoners on hunger strike last summer in response to abuse and mistreatment in Evin prison's ward 350.

GVF