One night at four Iranian ministries

I received the following from Iran. It was in Farsi and whoever sent it asked me to translate it. I only had time to do the first page which took me hours because my Farsi isn't that great. I will try to post the second page sometime tomorrow. You may find the post in Farsi here.

"One night at four Iranian ministries is hundred times worse than Guantanamo"

Many students from Tehran University have been questioned and are being moved to secret underground interrogation rooms. We hope that the students and others who are reading this will help find this hell hole of a place where it is impossible to sleep.

The students were arrested in a harsh manner with verbal abuse. Undercover plain clothed cops and uniformed police beat the prisoners and used foul and insulting language.

But this is not the worst part of the situation. Many may have been tortured mentally and physically. The arrested students who trusted the smiling kind uniformed guards that pretended to be students were taken aback when they got arrested and transported to the underground Iranian ministry. Later some were transferred to the Evin prison and they have not yet been released. Some have been tortured but the Iranian government dismisses this as student propaganda.

There were about 46 of us students transported in a minibus to an Iranian ministry. They had blindfolded us. In the bus there were chairs made of metal. The back of chairs were high and they forced us to lean our heads back against the chairs. As the driver drove, the guards would beat on the metal with a large sticks. The horrifying noise it made was unbearable to our eardrums. It was one of the worse mental tortures we had ever experienced. After awhile, from the rotation of the tires of the minibus and we could feel that we were going underground. After listening to the murmur of the guards, we knew we were in the underground of the Iranian ministry.

The room was about 100 meters and covered with heated black ashes. We could see the smoke coming off the ashes. They forced us to lay down and roll on the ashes. We had to roll in such a manner so that our heads would not touch the feet of the of the other row of prisoners. If our heads made the smallest contact with the feet of other captives, the guards would beat us with sticks and kick our heads and bodies. Then they would scream "you want a revolution" followed by non-stop verbal abuse that it is too shameful to repeat. There were at least 20 guards in civilian clothes.

Then they forced us to sit up and shouted to look to the floor or the ceiling. A few minutes later, they would beat our heads and the back of our neck with sticks. The guards who were more heartless than the others would kick us in the head and shout "why aren't you staring at the floor" even though no one had even dared to look up. We could hear workers who were breaking bricks and the the unbearable noise gnawed on our nerves. The guards claimed that the workers were just doing their job but we knew that they were trying to mentally torture us.

The students who needed to use the bathroom faced humiliating conditions. The bathrooms had no doors and the guards would look at us and time us when we urinated or defecated. We only had 30 seconds and if we needed more time, the guards would grab us and violently toss us outside of the toilet. One scene which I will never forget was when a student had just finished using the toilet in 30 seconds but didn't have time to put back his clothes. The guard kicked his naked male member and brutally tossed him outside.