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  Date / Time: 7/1/2009 7:37 AM UTC

  Iran dissident remembers the torture his comrades are now going through in Tehran
  

  By Angus McDowall
  Kianoosh Sanjari, 26, knows from painful experience what they are going through.
  Now a human rights activist and blogger in Washington DC, in 2005 he was on the streets of his native Tehran protesting after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first election victory. He was picked up by security forces, and what followed was an ordeal of fear and pain - which Mr Sanjari knows many of his friends are now suffering. The Basij and riot police had made a human tunnel to the bus and everyone who had been arrested was forced to walk down it. All the way they were kicked and beaten with batons. I was hit so hard I passed out. My hands were tied behind my back with plastic handcuffs on so tight it really hurt. There were about 50 of us on the bus and some must have been badly injured because there was blood sloshing about on the floor. As soon as we were on Chamran highway, we knew we were going to Evin. Once we reached the prison gates, they pulled out a couple of people - accused of being protest ringleaders - and pulled them off the bus to beat them up. They were behind the entrance gate, but we could hear them screaming in pain.
  "Inside the gates, someone took the names of everyone in the bus. Some were carried away because they were too badly wounded to go into the cells. The rest of us were driven for five minutes up the steep road to section 240, the one where there are lots of solitary confinement cells. At that point they filmed us, took our photographs and snatched our identity cards.
  "Evin is on the side of a mountain, and standing next to 240 you could see the popular Darakeh hiking trail going up a steep valley. On the way, we passed section 325, which is run by the Revolutionary Guards, and section 209, which is run by intelligence operatives.
  "The first thing you notice about 240 is how big it is.
  "It has lots of entrances, and we were taken through a back one. There were security forces men standing there and they hit people very hard as they came in. We came into an exercise yard with high red walls and tiny windows that led into the cells, angled so that the inmates could only see the sky.
  "After going through the yard, we went along several hallways and up flights of stairs. They had arrested so many people that there were five of us in each solitary confinement cell. The cells are only 6ft by 4ft, so there was barely room for us all to sit down inside. We could see the sky through a tiny window.
  "The man who took my details remembered me from my previous spell in Evin, so I was separated from the others and taken to section 209 to join the political prisoners. It is next to section 350, where they lock up the espionage prisoners.
  "In 209 they blindfolded us, put us on the floor and made us wait a long time while they did the paperwork. Then they stripped us and gave us prison clothes.
  "They took our things and threw everything into bags.
  "We were blindfolded and taken up many flights of stairs. People who stumbled or were too slow because they couldn't see were just dragged up by the guards. Eventually we reached a passageway with corridors leading off it to the cells. I was taken to number 63 and put inside.
  "There's one thing I remember most: the screams and pain from the interrogation rooms, which were just on the other side of the corridor from my cell - only separated by a single wall.
  "There were times you weren't let out of the cell for several days on end. And you were only allowed to go to the toilet a limited number of times. They gave you a card, which you had to shove under the door. When a guard saw it, he'd come and take you there, but you had to rush because they didn't give you much time.
  "In 209 you always have to wear a blindfold outside the cell. The only human interaction you had was with the guards. They put the food in through a small slit at the bottom of the door, but they had another window higher up, about the size of the palm of your hand. We were checked every hour or two.
  "I wasn't allowed to call anyone for a week. My mother was frantic. She went round all the hospitals and came to Evin every day, showing the guards my photograph and begging them to tell her if I was inside. Eventually they took pity on her, and told her that I'd contact her. I was only allowed 30 seconds to let her know I was alive.
  "When my turn for interrogation came, the guard came to my cell and just started dragging me by the collar. He was swearing at me and calling me "hypocrite", the word used by the regime to describe traitors and infidels.
  "I was taken to a room with green walls covered in soundproofing. I was made to sit on a chair facing the wall. The interrogator sat behind me. The first thing he did was slap me, very hard in the face, two or three times. I asked why he was hitting me, and that made him angrier because he hit me again, about seven or eight times in the space of a minute.
  "Then he said I'd either be executed or spend the rest of my life in prison. He said people had died at the protest and it was my fault. I'd be held responsible.
  "After the election of Ahmadinejad in June 2005 interrogation became significantly worse. The reason for this was the new intelligence minister, Mohsen Ejai.
  "Whenever there was a change of minister, the tactics in block 209 changed too.
  "The interrogators were most interested in whether I was trying to supply news to Persian-language outlets in the West, which I had been doing. They were also very interested in my relationships with other activists and with organisations like Amnesty International.
  "I saw Saeed Mortazavi twice. He is the Tehran public prosecutor who has been put in charge of investigating the protesters this year.
  "Once was in the sub office of the prosecutor after Ahmadinejad's victory in 2005. We'd been protesting about the undemocratic nature of the election. He is very soft spoken and mild mannered. But despite this, he's the one who personally signs all the arrest warrants for the people violently attacked by his police.
  "When people are defensive or upset, he just refuses to engage with them. He steps back and lets other interrogators get into shouting matches. He is very oppressive but it's all behind the scenes. He signs the warrants but doesn't get his hands dirty.
  "The second time I encountered him was during my second arrest. I was taken blindfold from my cell to the interrogation room. I knew it was him from the softness of his voice. He only asked me one question: "Do you enjoy coming back here all the time?' Then he left and I went back to my cell.
  "The officials have grown cautious about physical torture because it leaves marks when people are let out. So they use psychological methods: what we call "white torture".
  "They keep you in solitary in complete isolation for months. Throughout this time they start making things up. They tell you your mother is very sick or that your friends have confessed to things about you. They threaten to sexually abuse you and use high pitched noises for long periods. Suddenly they interrogate you several times in a single day.
  "Unfortunately, the situation now is very bad. I've been hearing that people at Kahrizak prison are being tortured to make confessions on television. They want to put it about that the protests are orchestrated by the West.
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