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Athanasiadis: my ordeal in Evin prison
Wrongly accused of spying for the British, photojournalist tells of his 18 days imprisonment in Tehran’s infamous jail
Iason Athanasiadis, the Anglo-Greek photojournalist who became the only foreign reporter to be detained by the Iranian authorities during the recent post-election riots, has revealed the privations he endured in Evin prison and the abuse he suffered at the hands of his captors who accused him of spying for Britain.
In an article for the Sunday Telegraph, Athanasiadis reveals how he was arrested as he was leaving Tehran on the Wednesday after the election.
"Just past passport control came the moment that every reporter dreads. 'Please follow me,' said a man wearing a brown shirt and jacket. 'You won't be travelling tonight.' Two of his colleagues quickly appeared. One flashed me a threatening grin as he shook my hand; the other just regarded me with contempt. 'Where are we going?' I demanded. They had no arrest warrant. 'For a long talk,' the first man crooned.
When Athanasiadis resisted, in an effort to ensure other passengers would take note of what was happening, the men put him in a headlock while they hauled him off, "punching all the way". His screams of pain resounded around the terminal, "but at least my detention had been noticed".
He was drive to Evin prison where he was blindfolded and taken into a windowless building that turned out to be the prison's notorious Section 209 - controlled by the intelligence ministry - where he was questioned for nearly three weeks.
Athanasiadis described one episode where, having been told to face the wall, he briefly craned his neck to see whether the interrogation suite had a camera. He was immediately slapped across the jaw.
"My face still smarting, I whirled round to confront him [the interrogator]. It was a visceral reaction and the only time in a week of almost daily interrogations that I stared straight into the face of one of my captors. What I saw was not reassuring. A scruffy white-flecked beard, a contemptuous mouth curling to reveal a flash of gold fillings, and eyes fixed at me in white anger.
"'Didn't I tell you never to turn around?' he snapped. 'Now turn away from me.'"
When Athanasiadis was eventually released, his interrogators having conceded that that he was not a spy, he was put on an Iran Air flight to Dubai. Taking off he pondered whether he would ever dare to return to Tehran. "That was what my interrogators had asked me, too - but my ambivalent answer had disappointed them. 'You shouldn't be so negative about your experience,' the senior interrogator said." ·
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Again and again we read first-hand accounts of the injustice and brutality of the Iranian regime, and yet governments seem reluctant to speak out or to cancel business dealings with the thugs who run the country under the guise of Islam. Until governments around the world take a stand, those in control of countries such as Iran, North Korea and China will continue to thumb their noses at the rest of the world and show total disdain for their own citizens.