Revisiting Kianoush Sanjari's Interview Where He Said He Endured Torture Because He Believed in His Cause

A significant part of the history of political repression by the Islamic Republic involves the forced transfer of political prisoners to psychiatric centers and the issuance of sentences labeling protesters as mentally ill. Fahimeh Khodrheidari previously addressed this important and less-discussed chapter of repression in Iran in November 2023, and Kianoush Sanjari, despite being in Iran, took a risk and recounted his experience of being transferred to Aminabad Hospital and the torture he endured in an interview with Yadaar of Voice of America. Below is a section of Kianoush Sanjari's conversation with Fahimeh Khodrheidari. You can listen to the full version here: Yadaar – Episode Six: The Stigma of Mental Illness on Political Opponents; Prisoners' Accounts of Forced Transfers to Psychiatric Hospitals and read the full text here: Yadaar – Episode Six: The Stigma of Mental Illness on Political Opponents; Prisoners' Accounts of Forced Transfers to Psychiatric Hospitals. Kianoush Sanjari is the first narrator. A journalist and political activist who spoke with me from Tehran. He has experienced the Islamic Republic's prison system more than ten times and has been sent to Aminabad for humiliation and punishment. I ask him where he wants to start discussing this horrific experience. Kianoush Sanjari: Well, among those who were transferred to psychiatric centers in recent years, some may have suffered from depression or their mental functioning may have been disrupted due to the pressures and conditions of prison, and their mental health may have been at risk of illness. I am not aware of the details of each case, but without a doubt, this process that I see is not a matter related to mental health, but rather a new phase of systematic political repression; at least for me, this happened. Let's go back to what happened to you. I want to ask you to talk about your own experience. The last time you went to prison, you were one of the political prisoners who was transferred to a psychiatric hospital, specifically to Aminabad. What process did you go through? How did this happen? Sanjari: To briefly answer your question, after returning to Iran following ten years of work and life in America and after being framed by the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic and sentenced in the Revolutionary Court to serve time in Evin Prison, I became depressed due to severe pressures in prison, and this was my tenth political imprisonment, which was unbearable for me. In Evin Prison, I was seen by a representative of the forensic medicine. I explained my situation to him and said that I was facing this case because of expressing my political thoughts and beliefs and my opposition to the political system of the country, and I explained that I was under psychological pressure and had committed no crime; I had not stolen, embezzled, climbed over people's walls, committed murder, or called for violence; I was just a journalist. I am a political opponent whose voice has been attempted to be silenced. When he realized that I had truly committed no crime, he said he would agree to my request for medical leave. Some time after that meeting, I found out that there was a letter agreeing to my leave, but it had not been executed. This letter somehow reached me, and I gave it to my family during a monthly visit, and they conveyed it to a judicial authority. So what happened next? Did you get transferred because of this letter? How were you transferred? Were you informed that you were being taken to a psychiatric hospital? To Aminabad? Sanjari: One early morning, under the pretext of reviewing my medical leave, I was taken out of prison. I was put in a van with several other prisoners. Those prisoners were dropped off in front of the courts. As usual, I had dealt with the courts and prisons for the past twenty-three or twenty-four years. Of course, in 1999, when I was arrested during student protests, we were transferred to judicial centers in a meat transport vehicle that had no windows; now we are being transferred in a van... After the prisoners got off one by one, two soldiers handcuffed and shackled my hands and feet. The vehicle moved away from Tehran. In an area where I no longer recognized my geographical surroundings and did not know where we were at that moment. I had heard the name Aminabad Hospital before; as one of the oldest centers for the care of patients with severe mental disorders, but I had no idea where this center was located in Tehran. Later, I learned that this center is located in the eastern part of Shahr-e-Rey, and I didn’t even know that I was going to be transferred to this center. In any case, the vehicle went, and suddenly I saw the sign and board of this center from the car window and read that it was the Razavi Psychiatric Center, which is the new name for Aminabad! So you suddenly saw the sign and realized you were being transferred to Aminabad, and what happened next? Sanjari: We entered. The door closed, and I was imprisoned there just like in a prison. At first, I thought I was transferred there for a medical examination or test. But when I saw myself with my hands bound and feet shackled next to patients suffering from severe mental disorders, when I looked at the closed windows and doors and the guards and security personnel, I realized what was happening; I was a political prisoner, and instead of going on medical leave that had been requested for me, I was now in an environment that could not help improve my depression caused by the heavy prison sentence and the baseless political charges and framing by the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic. Rather, that environment and that shock created a nervous crisis and psychological breakdown in me. I did not know how long I would remain imprisoned in that closed environment. In that environment, in that psychiatric hospital, I had to be alongside patients suffering from severe mental disorders, and I am not a specialist, but I am interested in psychology and have read books about it, and I know that those people can be categorized as acute psychotic patients, meaning those who have no control over their behaviors, speech, and reactions. They may perceive you as an enemy and engage in physical altercations or may have no control over their urination or eating or the sounds they make in their sleep due to their illness. What was the atmosphere like? What image can you give us of that space? When you found yourself in that environment, how did it seem to you? What concerns did you have? Sanjari: Well, there is no society or civility there. There is no logic other than taking strong medications that help with sleeping and sleeping and sleeping. We know that those patients are in dangerous states of delusion, and imagine being in that space and being forced to be imprisoned there for your political beliefs and opposition to tyranny and dictatorship, and imagine facing a dictatorial government system whose policies are not related to reality, rationality, or logic. A system that has experienced horrific political repressions, executions, tortures, rapes, political murders, and assassinations... and easily frames many dissenters and political opponents and has made many disappear and assassinated them, and now you face this reality that this system wants to deal with you in that space and how long they intend to keep you imprisoned there. You think about these things there, and now depending on your worldview and understanding of what has happened and your understanding of the political functioning, especially in this model of dictatorship, and your understanding of the history and roots of these issues and your lived experience, your reaction in that environment to what has happened can be adjusted. You have found yourself in such an unwanted space. You were forcibly transferred there with non-medical objectives. What did you do? Or to put it more simply, how did you survive? Sanjari: I was able to convince myself that I must be patient and get through this stage and not let this horrific event and unbearable suffering break me and know that this is not the end of life and that life will continue, and I must remain strong like before and control my mind and be aware of the dirty game that is in progress and remember why I am here so that I do not break down and resist and believe in the ideals and truths that exist in my mind and the world around me. Well, what happens when you enter there? What happened to you? What was the sequence of events after you realized where you were and what your situation was? Sanjari: That very first night, I was taken to a room. A person in a coat asked me to lie down. A soldier was with me. I was locked and chained, and I had no way to resist or refuse the order. I lay down. He took out a syringe and injected something into my body and asked what it was. He said it was a sedative or something like that. I was transferred to a bed in a closed environment where the windows were closed, and there were walls, and it was truly a prison; my hands and feet were chained to the bed! My hand was tied to the metal bar of the bed, and one of my feet was also shackled to the metal bar, and the soldier in the adjacent bed was lying down, and due to the injection of that substance, I was in a state of severe stupor and confusion, and I remember nothing else, and of course, I remember that I lost my ability to speak. My mouth was dry, and my tongue could not move or turn. Like a person who is mute, I tried to speak and say something, but I could not. Until the next day, I woke up and found myself chained to the bed. Who were your roommates? What was their mental health status? And this chain you mentioned that was tied to your hands and feet, did they not remove it even after being hospitalized? What was the necessity of it anyway? Sanjari: I remember one of them who had committed murder due to consuming large amounts of meth and had been imprisoned on that same bed for six months. Imagine I had been lying chained on that bed for long hours day and night. When I wanted to go to the toilet, they would unchain my hand from the bed, but I still had the shackle on. Two metal rings similar to handcuffs that you saw in the photos were fastened around my ankles, and these two rings were connected by a chain that was dragged on the ground, and I walked in that state and entered the toilet. The soldier stood guard outside the toilet, and I sat inside the toilet, and imagine that the shackle chain went into the toilet bowl, and when I urinated, the urine would pour over it, and I had to take the hose and wash the chain and return to the room in that dirty, unhygienic, and disgusting state and lie down on the bed and have that chain tied again to the metal bar of the bed! Imagine a political prisoner entering such a space. Can this environment play any role in improving the condition of that prisoner? Truly not! The judgment is yours! Sometimes when they brought food, they would place it on the bed, and my hand was still tied, and the soldier had gone outside to smoke. That same yard that was closed to us, and there was no one to unchain my hand so I could eat. Kianoush Sanjari returned to Evin Prison after a week. After that, he was out of prison for three months, but this was just the beginning of the story.... Sanjari: This was just the beginning of the story because, by the order of the monitoring department for security and political detainees in Evin Prison, I was handed over to medical commissions that are under the forensic medicine and judiciary. After that, according to the order, I had to visit that department every few months; several people would sit around a table, ask several routine and repetitive questions, and refer me with an official letter to the monitoring department of Evin Prison, and upon visiting that department, I would receive another letter in a stapled envelope and according to the order, I would visit a psychiatric center. I was hospitalized several times in other centers such as Roozbeh Psychiatric Hospital in Tehran and a center in Mohammadshahr Karaj, and in one of these hospitalizations, I was subjected to electroshock therapy. A device resembling a very large metal headphone was placed on my head, and when I was completely unconscious, electricity would flow from that device into my brain, and later when I was released from prison, I was able to study about it and understand what was happening. After this operation, individuals were quickly lifted from the bed while they were still unconscious and inappropriately thrown onto another bed to empty the bed for the next person to be placed on it and receive electroshock. Well, this process was done very quickly and was accompanied by violence. What do you mean by it was accompanied by violence? Sanjari: I mean that to wake the person from unconsciousness, they would hit the person's body hard, and I saw all these details, and naturally, these were applied to my body as well, and I would be in a state of amnesia for hours and had no recollection of what happened to me while I was unconscious. When I regained consciousness, I did not even know who I was, what my name was, where I was, and why I was there. I had no memory, no experience, no past. I was empty for hours, devoid of any experience, memory, or past. The narrative of Kianoush Sanjari, who said he paid the price for his love for Iran with torture, humiliation, and imprisonment. Kianoush Sanjari had previously exposed the methods of psychological torture of the Islamic Republic in an interview with Voice of America. Kianoush Sanjari ended his life in protest against Khamenei's dictatorship. Reactions to Kianoush Sanjari's protest suicide: His blood is on the Islamic Republic's hands.