Liz Perkins
Sat, 4 November 2023
Yalda Moaiery at the International Women's Media Foundation 2023 Courage in Journalism Awards - Vince Bucci/Getty Images
An Iranian political activist has told The Telegraph how she was kept in solitary confinement and tortured while being held in a notorious jail in Tehran.
Photojournalist Yalda Moaiery, 42, came to the attention of Iranian authorities after Donald Trump, the former US president, tweeted her photograph of a demonstration at Tehran University - changing her life forever.
Mr Trump shared the iconic image of a female student raising a clenched fist after a smoke grenade was fired by Iranian riot police in December 2017, in protest at the country’s economic situation.
He did so to mark the 40th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution and in the caption he wrote: “40 years of corruption, 40 years of repression, 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only 40 years of failure. The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.”
But Ms Moaiery became a target for authorities after her photograph gained such prominence and she told The Telegraph it led to her time behind bars at the brutal Evin Prison.
‘There were conflicts with the police’
She said: “I took that in 2017 and it was a demonstration. People were protesting over the economic situation at that time.
“I took that picture at Tehran University and there were some conflicts between the students and guards and police.
“Suddenly that girl went to the main door of the university and raised her hand to protest and I took that picture suddenly there.
“One year after that, nothing happened from the system but one year later Donald Trump used that on his Twitter. It was for the 40th anniversary of the revolution and he wrote something against the system and everything.
“Everything started at that time. They started to arrest me, asking me a lot of questions - the interrogations took like one year.
“After that, they sentenced me to two years in jail, it still remains and I have to go to jail if I go back to Iran. My life changed after that picture.”
Last year, she was arrested again and on Sept 19 2022, she was taken to Qarchak Prison for two months before being moved to solitary confinement in Evin Prison in Tehran.
She was jailed in the wake of the mass demonstration, which marked the first day of the movement Women Life Freedom.
“They wrapped my scarf like a rope under my neck and they pushed me to a van. The sexual abuse happened in the last seconds before they wanted to put me into the van,” she said.
“In the first hours, they didn’t even recognise me, they thought I was a normal person. When we were going to the police station, they asked for my social security number, they recognised me and everything changed.
“I was told I had two months in public prison in Qarchak Prison and one month in a solitary cell in Evin Prison - the [in]famous one.
“Public prison you know I could handle it. It’s like high school or something, a lot of women are living together.
“We didn’t have good access to baths or toilets. We didn’t have enough food, bread, water. We didn’t have enough oxygen.”
She added: “The solitary cell is completely different, it was really hard for me to handle it. I was thinking of killing myself because of those conditions.
“My interrogations would be at night. It’s a torture technique actually.
“For example, when you are going to rest, you are going to sleep. I was taking a shower and they started knocking and say you have to get ready and go to another dark place and sit in front of them.
Yalda's 2017 picture of an Iranian woman raising her fist amid the smoke of tear gas in Tehran
- Yalda Moaiery/AFP/Getty Images
“I couldn’t see them at all. It was a very very small place, they covered a mirror and I could only see myself there.
“This place is the worst place that you could ever imagine - the name of that place is the end of the world.”
She was released on bail and after several months was one of 80,000 people to receive the amnesty of the country’s leader, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Her bravery during her 23-year career has taken her to the Middle East and Africa and has recently had her work published in The Washington Post.
Ms Moaiery was recently honoured by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 34th Annual Courage in Journalism Awards at the Washington DC home of the publication’s proprietor and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez
“It was amazing, one of the best ceremonies. Between the three, that one was amazing,” she said.
“Mr Bezos was very friendly and cool, it was great.
“After my speech, he shook my hand and Miss Sanchez hugged me. He said, ‘I’m really interested by you’ and he was very kind to me. I appreciate that.”
‘It was great honour’
She was awarded the Wallis Annenberg Justice for Women Journalists Award for her incredible strength and perseverance despite being arrested and detained in Tehran, leading her to also be honoured at the Los Angeles home of the US journalist Willow Bay, who is married to Disney managing director Bob Iger.
“It was a great honour for me to meet Bob Iger, he was so kind and nice to me,” she said.
“I was super-lucky to meet these people during this trip.”
A final awards ceremony was held in New York at the Bank of America in recognition of the media industry’s most intrepid women.
“I couldn’t see them at all. It was a very very small place, they covered a mirror and I could only see myself there.
“This place is the worst place that you could ever imagine - the name of that place is the end of the world.”
She was released on bail and after several months was one of 80,000 people to receive the amnesty of the country’s leader, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Her bravery during her 23-year career has taken her to the Middle East and Africa and has recently had her work published in The Washington Post.
Ms Moaiery was recently honoured by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s 34th Annual Courage in Journalism Awards at the Washington DC home of the publication’s proprietor and founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez
“It was amazing, one of the best ceremonies. Between the three, that one was amazing,” she said.
“Mr Bezos was very friendly and cool, it was great.
“After my speech, he shook my hand and Miss Sanchez hugged me. He said, ‘I’m really interested by you’ and he was very kind to me. I appreciate that.”
‘It was great honour’
She was awarded the Wallis Annenberg Justice for Women Journalists Award for her incredible strength and perseverance despite being arrested and detained in Tehran, leading her to also be honoured at the Los Angeles home of the US journalist Willow Bay, who is married to Disney managing director Bob Iger.
“It was a great honour for me to meet Bob Iger, he was so kind and nice to me,” she said.
“I was super-lucky to meet these people during this trip.”
A final awards ceremony was held in New York at the Bank of America in recognition of the media industry’s most intrepid women.
Anti-hijab protests 'changed Iran and its prisons', says freed researcher
Joris FIORITI
Sat, 4 November 2023
Adelkhah has spent much of the last half decade in an Iranian jail
Joris FIORITI
Sat, 4 November 2023
Adelkhah has spent much of the last half decade in an Iranian jail
(JOEL SAGET)
The protest movement that erupted in Iran last year has transformed the country both outside and also inside prison, a French-Iranian academic, who returned to Paris last month after being held in the country since 2019, told AFP.
Fariba Adelkhah was finally allowed to leave Iran in October after a four-and-a-half year ordeal that began with her sudden arrest in 2019 and saw her spend years in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
But there she was also able to witness the courage of her fellow women inmates, who included this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, amid the "Woman. Life. Freedom." protests.
Female political prisoners have often sung together in a show of defiance, Adelkhah, who was released from prison in February but remained unable to leave Iran for months, told AFP in an interview in Paris.
That movement "has changed Iranian society and also its prisons," said Adelkhah.
The movement, calling for the end of Iran's imposition of a headscarf on all women and clerical rule, was sparked by the death in Iranian custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
She died after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran's dress rules for women.
Iranian security forces have cracked down on the protests in the country, killing hundreds, according to rights groups, and have executed seven men in cases connected to the protests.
Adelkhah said that in Evin the resistance movement brought together people from all walks of life -- including rights activists, environmentalists, political opponents, and representatives of religious minorities.
"We became united by this cause," said the 64-year-old researcher in Iranian Shiite religion and politics.
She herself was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran's airport, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal. Neatly-dressed security agents "very respectfully" asked her to follow them, she said.
Several hours later she was questioned for the first time, her head "facing the wall."
- 'Psychological humiliation' -
She would be subjected to many other interrogations in the future but she was never hit, Adelkhah said.
"This happens very often to men, but I never heard women mention it when I was detained," she said.
"But the absence of physical violence does not prevent constant psychological humiliation," she quickly added.
Others including rights activist Mohammadi have spoken of the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons.
The researcher was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. A five-year term was handed down for "colluding with foreigners" and one for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic," she said.
Marchal, a French sociologist specialising in sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested together with Adelkhah. He was released in March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris.
"I still don't understand what I was accused of," sighed Adelkhah, smiling.
While in jail Adelkhah, along with another prisoner, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, staged a hunger strike that lasted 50 days.
They were among some two dozen Western passport holders held in Iran in what activists and some governments have termed a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking.
Some have now been released, including all the American detainees, but around a dozen Europeans are still believed to be held, including four French nationals.
- 'Space of combat' -
The "Woman. Life. Freedom." protest movement has seen women prisoners defy prison authorities in Evin.
In the jail, located in the hills of northern Tehran, female prisoners are bareheaded when they are among themselves, but are required to cover themselves if a man enters or if they have to go to the hospital.
After the start of the protests, "nearly no one wore the veil" when a man entered, said Adelkhah.
On Wednesday, Iranian prison authorities have blocked the jailed rights activist Mohammadi's hospital transfer for urgently needed care over her refusal to wear the compulsory hijab, according to her family.
Adelkhah praised the 51-year-old journalist and activist, seen as one of the women spearheading the uprising who has been repeatedly jailed and has been imprisoned again since 2021.
She said Mohammadi has turned prison into "a space of combat, of protest par excellence", adding that she was "more heard" in jail than when she is outside.
The researcher was still in Iran when Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in early October. She said she saw "smiles" in the streets.
While the government quashed the daily protests with its repression, the slogan "Woman. Life. Freedom." has become part of Iranian culture, she argued.
"The Islamic Republic is forced to give ground over many things," said Adelkhah.
Today like-minded Iranian women greet each other when they go out without their headscarves. Before it was "unthinkable," said the researcher.
Now they tell each other: '"You are so beautiful!'"
jf-as/sjw/rox
The protest movement that erupted in Iran last year has transformed the country both outside and also inside prison, a French-Iranian academic, who returned to Paris last month after being held in the country since 2019, told AFP.
Fariba Adelkhah was finally allowed to leave Iran in October after a four-and-a-half year ordeal that began with her sudden arrest in 2019 and saw her spend years in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
But there she was also able to witness the courage of her fellow women inmates, who included this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, amid the "Woman. Life. Freedom." protests.
Female political prisoners have often sung together in a show of defiance, Adelkhah, who was released from prison in February but remained unable to leave Iran for months, told AFP in an interview in Paris.
That movement "has changed Iranian society and also its prisons," said Adelkhah.
The movement, calling for the end of Iran's imposition of a headscarf on all women and clerical rule, was sparked by the death in Iranian custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in September 2022.
She died after being arrested for allegedly violating Iran's dress rules for women.
Iranian security forces have cracked down on the protests in the country, killing hundreds, according to rights groups, and have executed seven men in cases connected to the protests.
Adelkhah said that in Evin the resistance movement brought together people from all walks of life -- including rights activists, environmentalists, political opponents, and representatives of religious minorities.
"We became united by this cause," said the 64-year-old researcher in Iranian Shiite religion and politics.
She herself was arrested on June 5, 2019, at Tehran's airport, where she was waiting for her companion Roland Marchal. Neatly-dressed security agents "very respectfully" asked her to follow them, she said.
Several hours later she was questioned for the first time, her head "facing the wall."
- 'Psychological humiliation' -
She would be subjected to many other interrogations in the future but she was never hit, Adelkhah said.
"This happens very often to men, but I never heard women mention it when I was detained," she said.
"But the absence of physical violence does not prevent constant psychological humiliation," she quickly added.
Others including rights activist Mohammadi have spoken of the sexual abuse of detainees in prisons.
The researcher was eventually sentenced to six years in prison. A five-year term was handed down for "colluding with foreigners" and one for "propaganda against the Islamic Republic," she said.
Marchal, a French sociologist specialising in sub-Saharan Africa, was arrested together with Adelkhah. He was released in March 2020 as part of a prisoner exchange between Tehran and Paris.
"I still don't understand what I was accused of," sighed Adelkhah, smiling.
While in jail Adelkhah, along with another prisoner, Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, staged a hunger strike that lasted 50 days.
They were among some two dozen Western passport holders held in Iran in what activists and some governments have termed a deliberate strategy of hostage-taking.
Some have now been released, including all the American detainees, but around a dozen Europeans are still believed to be held, including four French nationals.
- 'Space of combat' -
The "Woman. Life. Freedom." protest movement has seen women prisoners defy prison authorities in Evin.
In the jail, located in the hills of northern Tehran, female prisoners are bareheaded when they are among themselves, but are required to cover themselves if a man enters or if they have to go to the hospital.
After the start of the protests, "nearly no one wore the veil" when a man entered, said Adelkhah.
On Wednesday, Iranian prison authorities have blocked the jailed rights activist Mohammadi's hospital transfer for urgently needed care over her refusal to wear the compulsory hijab, according to her family.
Adelkhah praised the 51-year-old journalist and activist, seen as one of the women spearheading the uprising who has been repeatedly jailed and has been imprisoned again since 2021.
She said Mohammadi has turned prison into "a space of combat, of protest par excellence", adding that she was "more heard" in jail than when she is outside.
The researcher was still in Iran when Mohammadi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in early October. She said she saw "smiles" in the streets.
While the government quashed the daily protests with its repression, the slogan "Woman. Life. Freedom." has become part of Iranian culture, she argued.
"The Islamic Republic is forced to give ground over many things," said Adelkhah.
Today like-minded Iranian women greet each other when they go out without their headscarves. Before it was "unthinkable," said the researcher.
Now they tell each other: '"You are so beautiful!'"
jf-as/sjw/rox
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