CNN Special Report How Iran Used a Network of Secret Torture Centers to Put Down an Insurgency By CNN’s International Investigative Unit and Visuals Team Illustration: CNN (CNN) – For 40 days, Kayvan Samadi has avoided going to bed during the hours of darkness go. Instead, he spends the night reading books or chatting with the guards who guard the entrance to the compound he’s hiding in—anything to ward off the night terrors. After his afternoon rest, the 23-year-old medical student makes himself a cup of Turkish coffee and opens a pink notebook on his lap. In clear, moving sentences, written in impeccable handwriting, he captures his memories of the uprising in Iran. Along with thousands of others, he was rounded up by security forces and involved in a crackdown on protests sparked by the death in custody last September of 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini. His photographic memory returns in snapshots: a narrow alley leads to a courtyard where a babble of voices from a nearby girls’ school fills the air; Iranian intelligence agents drag him past a row of buttonwood trees and into a nondescript building. This is a secret detention center somewhere in the northern Iranian city of Oshnavieh, where he would experience the stuff of nightmares. Over the course of 21 days, his only human contacts were the two interrogators who he says subjected him to an increasingly severe torture program. They attacked him with insults, then beat him so hard that he spat blood. He was whipped and molested 42 times. On the 16th day of his detention, Samadi’s interrogators raped him with a baton – after failing to extract a confession from him. “The prison uniforms were stretchy and mine were loose. They pulled my pants down. I thought they were going to give me an electric shock again,” says Samadi. “He took the baton and walked behind me… I couldn’t even scream. I was stunned and just cried in silence.” Samadi, who belongs to Iran’s Kurdish minority, tells his story from his shelter in a location outside of Iran that CNN has not identified for its own protection. The torture methods he describes in detail match dozens of testimonies collected by CNN since the insurgency began. CNN has now established that much of this abuse was perpetrated not only within Iran’s official network of repression – jails and police stations – but also within a vast network of illegal secret prisons or black places like the one where Samadi was taken. The methods of repression and torture carried out in this shadowy network seem even more horrific than the regular harsh treatment arrested protesters can expect in legal detention centers. CNN has reached out to the Iranian government for comment on allegations of torture and abuse at these unofficial locations, but has received no response. Over the course of four months, CNN spoke to 12 torture survivors; six local lawyers, most of whom were in Iran during the uprising; and seven Iranian and international rights groups. They paint a picture of a regime using industrial-scale torture to put down an insurgency that poses the greatest domestic threat to the clerical elite in decades. Unofficial detention centers – mostly run by the powerful Revolutionary Guard and Secret Service agents – were key to systematizing torture. These sites exist outside of Iran’s official system, defying any modicum of due process provided by the Islamic Republic and allowing for seemingly unfettered cruelty. The most severe forms of torture described in testimonies about the unofficial detention centers included electric shocks, nail removal, flogging and beatings that left scars and broken limbs, and sexual violence. “People were beaten so badly that they ended up with broken noses, broken arms or broken ribs,” said an activist held in Mashhad in a warehouse used as a secret prison. For security reasons, CNN identifies him with the pseudonym Mehran. “Before that I was in prison for six years. It was a lot worse this time,” he said. A terrorist network CNN was able to pinpoint the location of more than three dozen black sites. Many are undeclared prisons in government facilities, such as military and Revolutionary Guard bases, that rights groups and lawyers have known about for years. Others are makeshift, secret prisons — sometimes warehouses, empty rooms in buildings, or even the basements of mosques — that popped up near protest sites during the Mahsa Amini uprising. Sources: CNN interviews with eyewitnesses, legal experts and human rights groups; Google Earth Iran’s capital, Tehran, was rocked by protests during the Mahsa Amini uprising, which sources say has led to a spread of black sites across the city. Unofficial places of detention Note: some locations are approximate According to dozens of testimonies from torture survivors and legal experts, the torture inflicted on protesters in these remote locations was “unprecedented” in its severity. These secret prisons exist outside of any due process allowed by the Islamic Republic, allowing for seemingly unchecked cruelty. Unofficial Places of Detention Note: The markers show the number of locations per city identified by CNN, not the exact locations. CNN has identified more than three dozen black locations across Iran. Many are undeclared prisons in government facilities, such as military and Revolutionary Guard bases, that rights groups and lawyers have known about for years. Others are makeshift, secret prisons—sometimes warehouses, empty rooms in buildings, or even the basements of mosques. Sources told CNN that the paramilitary Basij operate detention centers in numerous mosques around Mashhad, one of Iran’s two holy Shia cities, and are seen as the power base of the clerical elite. CNN was able to identify three of these black sites in Mashhad, where sources say protesters were brutally tortured. The Kurdish-majority western city of Sanandaj has been a focus of crackdowns, with thousands rounded up and protesters gunned down with live ammunition. dr Mohsen Sohrabi, a public hospital doctor, was arrested here at a black site for refusing to report injured protesters to the police, he said. On a particularly deadly day in September last year, dozens of protesters were killed in the city of Zahedan. A female protester told CNN she was arrested that day and taken to an undisclosed site where she was held for over a month and repeatedly raped. According to several reports, the secret locations typically served as the first port of call for many detained protesters. They would only be held for a few hours or a month. Interrogation methods ranged from verbal abuse to extreme forms of sexual and physical torture, according to testimonies collected by CNN. In all of these cases, the families of the arrested demonstrators were unaware of their whereabouts for hours or days. The demonstrators were mostly blindfolded and sometimes driven around the area in circles, apparently to disorient the detainees before interrogations began at the sites. “They took us to the roof and started filming us from head to toe,” said Fatemeh, a protester who says she was being held in a black camp in the affluent Tajrish district of northern Tehran. CNN uses a pseudonym for security reasons. “They slapped me in the mouth and called me a bitch and said, ‘I’ll video you so you can say foreign media influenced you to take to the streets,'” she told CNN. Fatemeh said the men were members of the Revolutionary Guards paramilitary unit – the Basij. She said they beat, verbally abused and molested her during her four-hour detention and blindfolded her in hijab. On the roof of the unofficial compound, her hijab slipped momentarily and the window of the adjacent building caught her eye. “Through that window I saw men with their hands tied behind their backs,” she said. “They were completely naked and bleeding from their backs.” One of her captors, noticing that she was mesmerized by the other apparently secret site next door, she said, abruptly pulling the veil over her face. The screams and pleas for mercy from the tortured men echoed in the air. Fatemeh said she was released at midnight. Her captors ordered her to run down the dark alley, threatening to shoot her if she turned. Unlike Fatemeh, Kayvan Samadi, the medical student, was not blindfolded. He says he clearly remembers the room he was held in: the dirty, sewn-together blanket that served as his mattress; the faces of his interrogators, who called themselves Rezaei and Ibrahimi; and the cabinet that contained the tools of torture, including screwdrivers and cattle prods. “I received electric shocks in the back of my head, neck and back,” he says. “I vividly remember they electrocuted my genitals for several seconds.” “Once I was untied, I could not stand. I was so weak, the soldiers dragged me to the cell.” Samadi was released on bail three weeks after his arrest. It’s unclear why he was released despite not signing a confession – although that’s not uncommon in Iran’s arbitrary, unpredictable system. He fled Iran shortly after his release and says he has slept in more than 15 safehouses since then, fearing the long arm of Iranian security forces. Not a new phenomenon Exceptional prisons are not a new phenomenon in Iran. Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Kurdistan Human Rights Center have documented the abuses committed in these places for years. Still, lawyers and activists say the proliferation of the sites during the Mahsa Amini protests was unprecedented. “Not only has the use of secret detention centers increased significantly, but the torture used there has also become more severe and the conditions of detention more restrictive,” said Ghassem Boedi, a lawyer from Tabriz, northwest Iran. The regime’s fear of a fall led to increasingly brutal tactics, observers say. “The main difference between these protests and the previous ones is the scale of the protests. They were so widespread,” said Boedi, who sought refuge outside of Iran. “The regime felt that this time it would be overthrown. They had to stop the protests at all costs.” “During the recent protests, they took protesters to places like mosque parking lots and garages at Basij bases and did whatever they wanted with them,” said an Iran-based lawyer who asked not to be named for security reasons. said CNN. “They released a group of rabid dogs to brutalize the protesters.” Four Iranian lawyers and two eyewitnesses told CNN that interrogators sometimes injected tranquilizers such as morphine and codeine into the protesters. Marzieh Mohebi, a lawyer and former judge in Mashhad – one of Iran’s two holy Shia cities – told CNN that at least one man was tortured to death at one of the many secret sites that have mushroomed in the city. Mohebi said basij centers at numerous mosques in the city of Mashhad, a regime power base in northeastern Iran, have been turned into black sites where protests appeared to take clerical leadership by surprise. “The Basij were beside themselves with anger. They did things before these protests that we thought unthinkable,” Mohebi told CNN from a place outside Iran where she fled during the uprising. Unofficial sites were also found near the main protest site in the southeastern town of Zahedan, home to many members of the Baluch community, a recalcitrant Sunni minority. Dozens were shot dead there on September 30 last year, the most violent day of the raid. It has become known as “Bloody Friday” among rights groups. A protester who took to the streets that day said she was taken to a secret location at a Revolutionary Guards facility, where she was held for more than a month and raped by three different men. She told CNN she was suffering from suicidal thoughts and sought the advice of a minister to ask if taking her own life would affect her in the afterlife. The cleric also told CNN about the conversation. The protester and the cleric asked not to be named for security reasons. An activist journalist group from Balochistan, Haalvsh News Agency, linked CNN to the protester and the cleric. It also provided CNN with the location of the unofficial site where she was arrested and assaulted, as well as other sites confirmed by another activist researching reports of detentions in Zahedan. Laying the Groundwork for Death Sentences The sites may have helped lay the groundwork for numerous death sentences imposed on protesters in hasty sham trials. According to CNN, protesters were almost always asked to sign a coerced confession saying they were part of a terrorist group, trying to overthrow the state or sowing disorder, spreading charges involving long periods of imprisonment or the death sentence . Four protesters have been executed since the Mahsa Amini protests began. At least 24 (note: check before publication) were sentenced to death and more than 100 were charged with crimes carrying the death penalty. A prominent Iranian lawyer, Saeid Dehghan, said he could confirm that at least two convicted protesters were tortured in unofficial detention centers before signing coerced confessions that would then be used to justify their death sentences. According to two sources familiar with the events, Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini – two protesters who were executed aged 21 and 39 respectively – were both tortured in unofficial locations before being transferred to Karaj prison south of Tehran. Mohsen Shekari, the first protester to be executed after the recent uprising, was also taken to an undisclosed location before being taken to prison and then sentenced to death in a hasty trial, according to a third source. Karami was an Iranian Kurdish karate master. Karimi’s father told Mizan Online, a news outlet linked to the Iranian judiciary, that his son was so brutally beaten during his interrogation that his captors left him on the street and left him for dead before arresting him again. According to his lawyer, Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani, Hosseini was a protester who “had his hands and legs tied…the soles of his feet were beaten with an iron bar, which was tased on various parts of his body,” according to his lawyer, Ali Sharifzadeh Ardakani. According to a source familiar with the events, Shekari was also tortured at a secret location. All three were sentenced to death for their confessions. “Whenever security forces tortured people, they were careful not to hurt their face or hands,” attorney Dehghan told CNN. “They kept their faces intact so they could appear in court without any obvious signs of abuse.” “And they kept their hands safe so they could sign their coerced confessions.” The brutality perpetrated in this clandestine network of harsh interrogators appears to have had its desired effect. The protests, which once posed an existential threat to the regime, have fizzled out. But activists say the underlying dissent has not gone away and that the regime’s cruelty in the face of the Mahsa Amini uprising has bred resentment that may resurface with even greater strength. But they admit that the spate of death sentences has had a particularly chilling effect. Samadi, the medical student, escaped that fate — but only because, he says, he resisted repeated attempts by his captors to extract a confession. Samadi sits upright on his metal-framed bed in his safe house outside Iran, dark circles around his eyes from lack of sleep. But he says he finds solace in his determination not to sign the documents presented to him. “I had no doubt about that,” he says, gently defiant. “Why would I confess to something I didn’t do and sign my own death warrant?”
