2010-03-15 10:35:14

THE PURPLE INTERVIEW: Haleh Esfandiari Talks About Her Incarceration, Her Interrogators, Her Guards And The Rest Of Her Ordeal Withinin Iran’s Infamous Evin Prison

Filed under: Ahmadinejad, Asia, Featured, Haleh Esfandiari, The Purple Interview, politics
Posted by: John

by JOHN MARKS

In the early hours of December 30, 2006, on the road to Tehran airport, a dark green Peugeot sedan pulled up beside Haleh Esfandiari’s taxi. What followed looked initially like a robbery.

“Three men, large knives strapped to their hips, jumped out of the car,” writes Esfandiari in her harrowing memoir of interrogation and solitary confinement My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran. “They all seemed to be wearing identical, olive drab outfits. One, a tall burly man with a crude Persian accent, ordered Modarress [her driver] to switch off the motor, open the trunk and hand him the car keys.”

The “robbers” took her passport as well, along with it her right to leave the country. Right away, Esfandiari, a scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center For Scholars in Washington D.C., knew that something was wrong, but the truth turned out to be far worse than she’d imagined. Within weeks, she learned that she was under investigation by Iranian Intelligence for conspiring to bring down the government.

The investigation, a blatant attempt to force a confession from an innocent woman, quickly became a farce, but it was no joke. In May, without being shown any evidence of her involvement in conspiracy, Esfandiari was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in Evin Prison, the country’s most notorious political prison. She stayed there for 110 days, conducting a stand-off with interrogators who repeatedly tried to wheedle and bully a confession out of her. These men, who identified themselves as J’afari and Hajj Agha, ruled her life, but they failed to break her.

Meanwhile, Esfandiari’s incarceration made headlines around the world. A concerted effort by her family, American and European government officials, journalists and human rights lawyers resulted in her liberation, but not before she’d witnessed firsthand the inner workings of Iranian political repression. Her story, as told in My Prison, My Home, is a brief literary tour of hell, opening a window on the fate of countless dissident prisoners around the world, shining a lot on the means by which the the unseen middle management of state repression exercise their power.

Her account makes for a gripping read, horrifying and enlightening at once, and we’re grateful for participation in this week’s Purple Interview.

Q:After your release, you write, you got rid of most of the clothes you wore in prison and tried to do everything you could to distance yourself from the place. Yet you presumably forced yourself back into Evin to write this book. How difficult was that effort?

A:Writing the book was never easy. I had to relive my eight months of country arrest, of which I spent 105 days in solitary confinement. I had to relive the pain caused to my mother with whom I was staying. I had to relive the fear—the fear first of arrest, then the fear of trial and a long prison term. In prison, there were the long hours of interrogation, the loneliness and the uncertainty and, always, the fear of torture. It all came back to me as I was writing. I still wake up sometimes not knowing where I am, thinking I am back in Evin Prison.

Q:The book works at so many different levels. It could be seen both as an intimate profile of the Iranian police state and a manual of how to survive it. At other times, you can seem like an anthropologist doing field work on the lifestyles and mindsets of interrogators. You mentioned that you started to write books in your mind while you were in solitary confinement. Is this one of them?

A:No. In prison, I focused my entire attention on dealing with my interrogators, on escaping the trap they were setting for me. I disciplined myself not to think about the conditions of my incarceration. But I also needed moments during the day to escape my immediate surroundings. That is why I wrote a children’s story in my mind for my two grand daughters. I also composed in my mind a biography of my paternal grandmother, a woman who taught me Persian poetry and appreciation for Islamic and Persian culture. I wanted to relive my childhood which was happy and serene.

Q:It’s been three years since your arrest, roughly two since your release. Do you still personally grapple with the memory of your confinement? How do you cope?

A:The scars of such an experience never really heal. For months after my release and return home, I had nightmares. I kept imagining that Iran’s intelligence agents were still following me. But writing the book was a kind of catharsis. It helped me give words to, make sense of, and shape my experience. I have given talks about my book in many different parts of the U. S. I still often become emotional when I remember saying goodbye to my mother and knowing that I might never see her again. But I feel fortunate to be able to share my story with others, and the interest and concern people everywhere have shown has been uplifting and comforting.

Q:We just passed the 31st Anniversary of the Iranian revolution. Three million people took to the streets. Arrests continue. On the one hand, the demonstrations haven’t stopped. On the other, they don’t seem to be making much visible progress in terms of moving the government from its repressive stance. Given your particular insider experience, can you give us any insight into what might actually be happening inside the country now?

A:The regime is experiencing a deep legitimacy crisis. Police brutality, trials and imprisonment have not silenced the protest movement. The scale of the protests is now perhaps smaller than the protests that immediately following the elections; but this is hardly surprising given the intensity of the crackdown. The children of the revolution , the younger generation who came of age under the Islamic Republic, are confronting one another. On one side are those who want a more open society, accountability, the rule of law, an independent judiciary, a freely-elected president and parliament, punishment for those who committed atrocities on the streets and in prison cells following the June elections, and normal relations with the outside world. On the other side stand the extremists, centered on the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basijis, the judiciary and the security agencies. They have made common cause with the hardliners in the regime, think in terms of a repressive state apparatus, and wish to snuff out dissent. They feel threatened by the opposition parties of the Green Movement. The regime may succeed in silencing dissent in the short run, but they will have to rule by force, with the instruments of a police state. They will enjoy neither legitimacy nor credibility.

Q:Can you talk about your own personal experience of the upheaval of the last few months? Reading the book, I couldn’t help wondering if your relationship to these events must be quite intense, knowing what you know about the internal workings of the system, knowing better than most what fate a lot of the arrested dissidents are likely to face?

A:I never expected that the regime will charge its own people—leading figures in the reformist movement, senior members of the former Khatami government, all men with impeccable revolutionary credentials—with attempting to foment a velvet revolution. I believed that the era of accusing people of planning a velvet revolution in Iran, a charge leveled against outsiders in the past, was over. I thought it had been discredited during my arrest and interrogation and those of the Iranian-American urban planner, Kian Tajbakhsh, and the Iranian-Canadian philosopher, Ramin Jahanbegloo. Nobody in their right mind could believe that three academics were trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic.

But I was wrong. It turns out the regime is obsessed with the idea that it might be overthrown by a popular, peaceful movement such as those that overthrew Communist regimes in countries like Georgia and the Ukraine. The paranoia I detected in the agents of the Intelligence Ministry during my own ordeal in 2007 persists and is even stronger today. Besides, the post-election unrest not only caused the hardliners to panic; they also snatched at the opportunity to rid themselves once-and-for-all of the reformists and moderates in their midst. Hundreds were arrested and subjected to show trials. Some were executed and tortured to death. Kian Tajbakhsh was rearrested in July last year, tried and sentenced to five years. The hardliners tried to snuff out the Green Movement at the very moment of its birth.

Q:A moment of intense hope, perhaps?

A:Both yes and no. The pictures we saw of hundreds of thousands of Iranians on the streets, shouting “Where is my vote,” was exciting and inspiring. But the crackdown has been intense, severe. You cannot expect people to keep coming out on the streets and risk beatings, knifings, imprisonment and even death without stronger leadership and clearer guidance. The opposition leaders are beginning to find their voice; but they are not yet leading effectively.

I did not think that, if elected, Mousavi would bring about major changes. In keeping with his election promises, he would have freed up the press and political parties a bit, stopped the harassment of the young, granted more rights to women and focused on the economy. He did not intend fundamentally to change the system. But I also did not think that the regime would be so alarmed by this prospect of moderate change that it would manipulate the elections. Perhaps they sensed in the enthusiasm for Mousavi the beginning of a momentum they could not stop. The severity of the crackdown has changed the calculus. The opposition leaders have broadened their demands; the people expect more fundamental change; and the government dare not retreat one step lest it unleashes an avalanche of demands and ends up losing control.

Q:One of the most intriguing aspects of your book is your description of the “relationship” that develops between you and your interrogators, particularly with Ja’fari. Can you give a brief description of him for people haven’t read the book?

A:Ja’fari was my unwelcome companion—my interrogator, the presence I could not shake off—for eight months. He was a man in his early thirties, spoke a broken English, and was inseparable from his laptop. During interrogations, which could last eight and nine hours a day, he was persistent and harsh, and he was adept at twisting the truth. Threatening and intimidating, he seemed to enjoy his job. He began the interrogation when I was not yet imprisoned in Evin and continued after I was incarcerated. In Evin Prison he was joined by his superior, Hajj Agha. When I was released he accompanied me to the airport and made sure I left the country. I thought of him as a member of a new breed in the Islamic Republic, who dedicated their lives to make other people suffer. Habitually rude and relishing his work, he nevertheless appeared to me at times to be listless, indifferent, even bored.

Q:For me, your account of this man seemed to conjure up an entire class of largely overlooked professional—the middle management of dictatorship. On the other, you make very clear that he and his colleague Hajj Agha were individuals who brought their own unique personalities to interrogation. At times, it’s possible to glimpse the humanity of these men, however deeply buried in the norms of the police state, and that makes for a deeply ambiguous reading experience. Can you talk about your attempts to render them accurately in the book?

A:Once I was in Evin Prison, Ja,fari was joined by his superior, Hajj Agha, who took the lead in the interrogation. Hajj Agha had a softer, more intelligent approach than Ja’fari, and this made him the more dangerous interrogator. Naturally, after weeks and months under questioning, you get to know your interrogators—their methods, their quirks, the forms of intimidation or persuasion they use. They sometimes said a word or two about their families. They talked on cell phones, and I caught snatches of their conversations.

I was aware, from my reading, of the so-called “Stockholm syndrome,” the idea that a special relationship, even trust develops between a prisoner and his or her interrogator. I made sure nothing like that happened to me. My interrogators were my jailers; they had signed the orders that put me in solitary confinement; they were fabricating charges against me; they were putting me through hell. I never allowed myself to forget these facts. Besides, I told myself, no one had forced them to work as Intelligence Ministry agents and interrogators. (They both had second jobs as university professors—or so they told me; they could have done other things with their lives). They had chosen bullying, and worse, as a profession. I tolerated them. I learned enough about them, I hope, to make them real to the readers of my book; but I felt no sympathy for them; I couldn’t, as it were, break bread with them.

Q:After your release, you received a gift from your interrogators, whom Ja’fari refers to as “the boys”. The gift is a book of poetry by Hafez, a gift that you describe as “bizarre”, and that seems an understatement. It’s the most mysterious moment in the book to me. Looking back, do you have any more insight into the sentiment expressed there?

A:The gesture was very Iranian; but it was a distortion of Iranian tradition. As I write in my book, the ‘gift’ was the Ministry of Intelligence’s way of saying, after all they had done to me, “no hard feelings. Let’s be friends.” These men seemed oblivious to the havoc they wreak on lives, the damage they do to people. They imagined that they can make everything all right by a goodbye present. But I cannot forget what they did to me. In me, this attempt to make amends only generated a sense of revulsion. I chose to treat it as a my goodbye: goodbye to Evin Prison, goodbye to my Intelligence Ministry interrogators, goodbye to my jailers.

Q:You write very movingly about another category of professional at Evin Prison, the female jailers with whom you at time seemed to have an almost motherly relationship and who in turn appear protective of you. That struck me as the most complicated human connection in the book, and I wondered as I read how you approached your depiction of them. Were you ever worried that you might somehow compromise them by writing with so much sympathy?

From the moment I was put in solitary confinement I decided to treat the women guards of ward 209 politely. I told myself that they were employees doing their job, and I wanted to ensure that our interaction remained correct but civil. It helped that I have the ability to talk to everyone as an equal. I treated them with respect and as human beings; and they reciprocated. They knew the interrogations were harsh; perhaps they too understood that I could not be guilty of the dreadful things I was being charged with. They broke no rules; but they tried to ease the conditions of prison life for me. When I look back, I am bemused by the thought that I once could count women prison guards as my companions.

Q:You write that when you were first in solitary confinement, you read the Koran that had been left in your jail cell. What was it like reading that particular book under those circumstances? Did you find consolation there or was it an alienating experience, given that your jailers presumably derived their ultimate authority from the Koran?

A:I had some familiarity with the text. Over the years, I had of course read passages in the Koran, especially the passages relevant to women. My grandmother was religious, and she used to recite verses from the Koran to me as a child..

In prison the only book that I initially was given was the Koran. I decided to study it from an academic perspective for insight into the mindset of the people who work in the name of Islam. I wanted to understand why they do not practice what they preach. I was searching for the sources of injustices committed in the name of Islam. Understanding the text is often difficult, and this was an intellectual challenge which I welcomed in the loneliness of my cell. One of the older women guards, who had studied at a religious seminary, helped me with the interpretation of difficult passages or brought me books on Koranic exegesis. I did not really find an answer to my question. There were always prayer rugs and prayer stones in the interrogation rooms; and they caused me to wonder how an interrogator could pray with a prisoner, then turn around and subject him to harsh interrogation, perhaps mistreat him, or set him up for a false confession, trial and a prison term. I remain puzzled at this conjunction of prayer and prison, religion and repression.

Q:Your story reminds us that untold numbers of political prisoners remain in Evin Prison and places like it. In your account, the sense of isolation and abandonment is overwhelming. In closing, can you offer any advice to readers on how they might help out, even in small ways?

A:What saved me and kept me sane during those 105 days in solitary confinement was my inner discipline. I decided not to think about my family. I decided not to give in to depression. I kept repeating to myself that I might end up spending the rest of my life in Evin under terrible conditions; and I therefore had to plan a routine for my long days. Aside from the lengthy interrogations, I adopted a strict routine of exercise and reading. I took my meals and showers, insofar as I could, at the same time every day. I fully used any time I was allowed on an enclosed rooftop terrace to rapidly pace up and down. I carefully rationed reading books once they were made available to me.
In prison you hang on to the smallest gesture of kindness, the barest sign of life outside the prison walls. I had moments like this when I was allowed to speak briefly to my mother on the telephone , or permitted to spend more than the regulation one hour on the outside terrace the prisoners were allowed to use, or when I was allowed to receive English books from my fellow prisoner, Kian Tajbakhsh who had access to his home library. One day I saw a butterfly on the terrace. Another day, a female guard brought me a tiny rose from the prison garden. I treasured these moments, took comfort from them.
At the same time, I never allowed myself to succumb to despair; and even though there were times when I broke down and cried, I did so only in the privacy of my cell or under the shower. I knew the Intelligence Ministry wanted to break me down; and I was determined not to permit me them to do this to me. I held on to a blind (and, as it turned out, justified) trust in my husband. I knew that he would not leave a single stone unturned to get me out.

Comments (3)

3 Comments »

1. On page 150 of her book “My Prison, My Home” Esfandiari describes the way the Iranian security service saw her. “There was a simple, even compelling, but ultimately mad logic to Hajj Agha’s theory … a “logical” conclusion that, examined dispassionately, was simply wrong, divorced from reality.”

   However the facts are compelling that she is a CIA agent. See the facts laid out at http://www.peakoil.org.au/news/index.php?esfandiari.htm, including a link to the confession video.

   Where is the “logical” refutation to back up the statement that they were “simply
   wrong” ? She doesn’t give one ! Out of a 230-page book, there is no logical
   refutation of the compelling argument that she is a CIA agent, someone who uses the cover of being an academic to go back and forth to Iran, while working for a US Government financed think tank, quite possibly handing out passwords for secure internet connections, so that Iranian dissidents can feed subversive information back to her in Washington.

   For all her protestations of innocence, there is nothing to prove it. For all her
   assertions of Iranian paranoia, and “mad logic”, she makes no logical argument at all as to why they are wrong. I can only assume, then, that she is what the Iranians say she is. Having been exposed, she is no longer of any use as an agent, (no one in Iran would dare to be found plotting with her) so they let her go.

   Comment by Dave Kimble — March 15, 2010 @ 7:07 pm

2. There’s something a little odd about your argument here. She was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement for months, and yet somehow you’re suggesting she deserved to be because she never adequately proved that she wasn’t a CIA agent. Really?

   I would think that the burden of proof in any society based on the rule of law, which, of course, Iran’s isn’t, would feel compelled to produce evidence that might hold up in a fair and open trial, but that never happened. Instead, her interrogators strained constantly to link snatches of information in a kind of conspiratorial chain, much like conspiracy theorists everywhere, in an attempt to get her to admit to something they themselves couldn’t prove.

   If they had real evidence, none of this would ever have happened. The very progress of her case suggests there was no evidence.

   Comment by John — March 15, 2010 @ 7:36 pm

3. I don’t believe the usual rules of “innocent until proved guilty” apply to spies – in the US or in Iran.

   She has subsequently described herself as “the perfect suspicious person” from the Iranian Security Service point of view.

   There can be no doubt the Bush regime allocated many millions of dollars to regime change in Iran, and Obama increased that to $100 million last year. Congress voted $9 million to the Wilson Center, where Esfandiari works, last year, and oil companies and banks contributed another $18 million. You would have to wonder what they thought they were getting for their money if it wasn’t regime change.

   Anyway, rather than argue further, could you get her to do another interview, and ask her :
   1. if there is anything she can say to back up the assertion that they were “simply wrong” ?
   2. why has she never published any academic papers ?
   3. what work did she do for RAND ?
   4. what work did she do for NED ?
   5 did she teach Farsi to CIA operatives at Princeton ?

   You know – ask some penetrating questions instead of the happy-smiley “isn’t she brave for a grandmother” sort of stuff.

   Comment by Dave Kimble — March 24, 2010 @ 1:32 am

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