Memory

As I passed through the gates of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, I could not believe that this was really me, standing at the edge of where the world finishes.

Abu Ghraib prison, a name that sent shivers down the back of any Iraqi, was in front of me and I, with over twenty one years history of serving the Mojahedin organization, had to start a new existence in this prison and wait for the leadership of the organization, especially Maryam, the sensual wife of Massoud Rajavi, to decide in what way they will eliminate me.

Looking back I clearly remember that even while I was entering the prison I had not understood or recognized the true nature of this barbaric couple. I did not know exactly how they had been surviving on the consumption of the blood of the children of my country.

It is reminiscent of the ancient story of Zahak whose shoulders were kissed by the devil whereupon two voracious snakes grew, one on each shoulder. Then the devil, posing as a doctor, came to his bedside and told him ‘if you feed these snakes a human brain each every day for some time, they will die’. So year in, year out without end, Zahak killed the children of the people of Iran and fed the brains to the snakes on his shoulders. And now this same story is being repeated by Rajavi and his wife who, for getting a grip on power – and what a dirty way of achieving power – are killing the best children of this country. They are selling them in bunches to the likes of Aghid Hashem and Naghib Mohammed [two agents of Saddam’s Secret Services]. I clearly remember my last day in Ashraf camp when they were going to hand me over to the Security Services of Saddam. On that day, a well known dirty and corrupted woman called Mahvash Sepehri together with Batool Rajaie and Javad Khorasan from the so called officials of the organization, along with some of the well known torturers of the organization including Farhad Olfat, came to me and asked me to put my head down and by accepting the rank of deputy of section, go back to my work. After a year of imprisonment and torture in solitary confinement I had only one answer and that was to spit on the floor at their feet.

After a few days in Abu Ghraib prison, I discovered what ‘Falgheh’ meant. But I had no idea that I would become famous in Abu Ghraib together with Abass Yazdani as a ‘loyalist’ of the Falgheh. The Falgheh was a specially made machine for torturing the prisoners. Every Iranian prisoner and in particular every ex member of the Mojahedin had to be tied to this equipment. The so called ‘deposits’ of Rajavi, were informed by our torturers, that we had to feel the machine in such a way that we would understand more deeply Rajavi’s sacrifices, and we would witness with our whole being that our Mojahed leader is paying the highest price by accepting the torture of his ex members.

It did not take long for me to experience this machine. In one of those hot Iraqi afternoons my name was suddenly shouted out by one of the prison guards. I reported to him and without a word he started to beat me with a big wooden club. My head was broken and blood poured from several places on my body. He did not stop and a few moments later two other guards joined him. Nothing was said. Only severe beating. I was loosing my strength very quickly and then I don’t know what happened.

There was some unfamiliar sound and then I was up. At first I thought that I must be dreaming, but the pain was so real that I forgot what I was thinking about. I was covered in blood.

My jaw was dislocated. Lying me on the floor they started again and I could feel their boots kicking every part of my body while I was screaming.

In that situation the one thing I did not know was that I would be spending the next three months living in a toilet.

The guards made me stand on my legs. Only at that time was I informed that I was accused of trying to escape the prison and that there were others who had allegedly been trying to help me and that I would not tell their names! They were beating me up to tell them the names of people who did not exist.

It was clear that the real reason for my torture was that I had been trying to give hope to the other prisoners and had been trying to convince them that one day they would be freed and so we should not give in to the demands of the torturers to go back to Rajavi.

They had found out about this. The laughable accusation of trying to escape was something they would routinely use to cover whatever real purpose they had to beat people up.

Naturally there were people who were unable to put up resistance and under torture would start saying anybody’s name in the vain hope that they would reduce the torture. I would not co-operate in this charade and would not give any names. I could not even bring myself to give the names of the people that I knew had been the cause of my situation.

That was why I had to be tortured to the end. Every torturer and every prisoner knew that these were false allegations but again, everybody knew also that the system of torture and beating had to continue.

My name had come up and in the end they moved me to ‘Mahjaz’. This was a toilet with no water where they would not give you clothes, food or anything else. There was no light in it either. For three months in the worst heat of Iraq I had only 3 glasses of water per day for all my needs. I had no food for the first four days and then I received one piece of bread per day. I had to sleep by the side of the same toilet bowl which had been used over and over and had never been cleaned. The concrete floor was not big enough to stretch out my legs while lying down to sleep.

Living in this condition for three months was barely possible, but every day too after counting the prisoners, the guards would come and in groups of three to five would beat me up and haul me off to the prison yard. There in front of others, they would tie me to the ‘Falgheh’ and beat me on my feet with a very thick wooden club and I would scream and shout. After a while, it became a routine. Every morning I had to run into the yard with a guard beating me on my back. I had to lie down in the middle of the yard so that the chosen prisoners of the day could tie my feet onto the ‘Falgheh’ and keep them up so that the guards could beat my severely injured feet with their special clubs. Seeing me under torture had become a normal thing even for my friends. It was just another routine among hundreds of other scenes in Abu Ghraib. But it was very different for me. For me it was constant torture and constant fear of the next torture session. Many times I could see that while I was under torture the other prisoners were talking to each other and laughing. I could not blame them as I could remember that before me, it had been the turn of Abass Yazdani, and I used to go and watch even though I did not want to. And now it was my turn.

On one of these regular torture days, my foot broke and I passed out. When I came round I saw that they had bandaged my foot. They had not touched my other wounds. But breaking my foot and losing my nails meant the torture was stopped for some time. I spent about three years in Abu Ghraib prison on the direct order of Massoud Rajavi, during which for only three months was I exempted from torture.

All these barbaric activities were taking place because Rajavi had decided that he no longer wants to have any ex members.

Today Rajavi is serving the Americans in rebuilding the Secret Services of Iraq. He is also serving shoulder to shoulder with the new torturers in Abu Ghraib prison. Both Saddam and Bush know that Rajavi, who does not have any mother country, would do any dirty work to please his masters and that is why his sell by date can always be renewed. He resembles an infamous torturer during Iran’s Safavid Empire [1501 – 1722].

This man remained in his position after the attack by Ashraf Afghan and went on to serve in Nader Shah’s court. One day on his way to work he saw the head of Nader Shah on a spike. He approached the people whom he was to kill that day – the ones who killed Nader Shah the night before – and asked them to give him fresh orders for the new victims to be beheaded. He stayed in his job even after the death of Nader Shah.

Similarly, Massoud Rajavi will always have some customers up to the last day of his life. That is, of course, unless someone does not bring him to justice sooner.

Akbar Akbari Sharbaf

Date: 2004/09/05

Dear friends in “Nejat society” My name is Sayed Mahmud Hosseini. I was born in Neyshabuor and I live in Memories of Sayed Mahmud Husseini Mashhad now. Because of the life difficulties, I was forced to stop my studies up to the first grade of guidance school and go to work instead.

In 2002, when I finished my military service, I went to Turkey legally to find a job. Before leaving Iran. One of my friends named Mojtaba introduced me to an acquaintance of his. He worked at Platon Hotel in Istanboul. Mojtaba gave his address to me and told me that he can find a job for me.

But when I reached Istanboul and looked for him, he had gone to Greece.

After a few days of going about, I couldn’t find any work since I didn’t know the language, on the other hand I didn’t have enough money, so disappointed and helpless I decided to return home.

One morning, at 11 o’clock I went to the bus station. The first bus to Iran was supposed to leave at 2 pm. So during these hours while I was wondering around the station desperately I ran into a man called Saeed. He invited me to walk with him, and glad to see an Iranian, I narrated my adventures for him.

Saeed abused my misery and offered me a job.

He told me:you can work in Mujahedin Khalq Organization, you will learn more English, music, make money and any time you would like to leave the organization you can, on the whole you are your own master. Saeed was an evil in a man’s cover who tried to attract me to do terrorist activities hypocritically and I didn’t know that I was a victim. I was always dreaming of finding a job and sending money to my two sisters and my old mother.

But it is to be regretted that it was just a dream. I and many others were caught in the net that Saeed made.

I accepted his promises, he took me to Ankara and introduced me to Ali Ankara ( he was Turkish), a member of MKO.

We were three, Ashkan who had come from Cypres, Reza who had come from Tehran and me. After being introduced to Ali, he took us to Taaj Hotel and after three hours sent us to Baqdad via Syria by train.

Arrival In Iraq

While arriving Iraq, I was watching the poor houses and the unpleasant condition of life regretfully and my dark fate, waiting for me passed my mind. Therefore we decided to return from the beginning but every time, with their evil propaganda, they tried to convince us to go on.

Having arrived in Baqdad. They took us to a place called Ashraf. At the door of Ashraf we became penitent and decided to come back, even we took some steps backwards and refused to enter Camp Ashraf which was a military camp, since we were not interested in military activities, our motive was finding a work, but the members of the terrorist group prevented us to go and said:â€ you decided to come yourselves but you can’t go by yourselves and forced us to enter the Camp with their weapons.

Disagreeable and Hypocritical treatment.

On the first day, they kept us behind the entrance of the building of the camp. We were frightened of so many weapons and military devices, so promised to eachother to leave the camp tomorrow morning, but they didn’t let us.

We were thinking of a dark destiny. Night came; they took us to the building and settled us in rooms. What they had told us was very different from what we saw.

I complained, broke the window and the T.V of the room to provide them an excuse to make us free. The same night, they took me near Aydeen and mokhtar, who were the responsibles of the arrivals, to investigate. Aydeen shouted at me violently and called me spy, regimes agent and enemy. He told me :â€ I keep you here for tow years and force you to labour and send to Iraqi prison to stay there for eight years and it is not obvious how they would deal with you he always threatened me and tortured me mentally so that they could make me obedient.

But their bad treatment led me to make my decision to save myself. They even didn’t permit me to call my old mother for fourteen months.

Brain washing

A month passed and because I continued to show the signs of opposition and my willingness to leave, they arranged meetings for me where they said:” we struggle for the people not for ourselves. We don’t want any thing for ourselves.” With their deceitful slogans and their vain promises and actually by force they could transfer us to the reception. I had stepped in a path that I did not like at all. I was a villager who had been grown up in the villages around Neyshabour and I had had no information about the nature of the organization. I had always dealed with farms, spades and picks not guns and tanks and terror. Having arrived at reception, I began to disobey. They took me to meetings to accomplish their process of brainwashing. They threatened and despised me regularly and kept on frightening me from the Islamic Republic regime, but always I answered:” I want nothing but my freedom. Therefore they shouted at me angrily and asked me:” whose policy do you lead? You are the evil agent of regime. They forced us to attend revolutioal meetings, weekly ablutions and Amaliat-e- Jari (ei: Current Operation in which the members had to confess all their thoughts including sexual dreams, thoughts or relations ) but regularly we tried to get out of the meeting using different excuses.

Forced Meetings

Here I bring you some examples of the meetings that the members were obliged to attend:

One day, while I was on food strike and I didn’t talk to any body, I saw some commanders had lifted a man named Farhad and were taking him to Current Operation by force; I intervened and quarreled with them. So one of them told me that I had to go too and left him go and caught me. I fought them and this battle led me to an injury to my right arm. I broke the window to defend myself with the glass.

Sohrab was an other person who avoided attending the meetings but because of too much pressure he committed suicide. He ate 60 sedative pills and he got toxicity. He was taken to hospital immediately and then they threw him in a room for a long time.

Another one who had become sick psychologically because of too much mental pressure and avoided to attend the meetings, immolated himself, consequently his right hand burned. His name was Mohammad Bandi and he was from Abadan but resided in Isfahan. He also lives in Isfahan now. He fled from the camp when the American forces seized there.

Majeed was from Kermanshah. While the period of dispersion he wanted to flee but the officials killed him. Since this man was the topic of the meetings and always they used bad language against him, he didn’t have a normal mental condition.

The Abu Ghraib prison that I know

Memories of Sayed Mahmud Hosseini