UNPO, Netherlands
Jan 28 2008

Iran: Film to Show Horrors of Evin Prison
2008-01-28

Mehrnoushe Solouki’s film, `The Evil and the Good’ documents her
detention and life inside one of Iran’s most notorious prisons.

Below is an article written by Toumaj Tahbaz and published by Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

Since January 18 [2008], Solouki has been back in Paris, safe in the
warm embrace of family and friends — and far from Evin prison. Yet
it still haunts her.

A doctoral film student at Canada’s University of Quebec, Solouki
traveled to Tehran in late 2006 to research a documentary about the
burial rites of Iran’s religious minorities. But when she
accidentally stumbled upon a mass grave of regime opponents summarily
executed in 1988, she was quickly thrown in prison.

It was February 19, 2007.

"I was leaving the office of my colleague when five plainclothes
agents, who seemed to be armed, stopped me," Solouki says. "From that
moment on, my life totally changed."

Solouki went on to spend a month at Evin in solitary confinement,
before her release on a bail of 85,000 euros ($124,000) posted by her
parents in France, at the risk of losing their own house.

But authorities had confiscated the 39-year-old filmmaker’s passport.
Unable to leave, she waited months for her trial in November [2007]
on charges that included making antigovernment propaganda and
endangering national security. At the trial, she was fined around
$2,000 for her activities.

The French Foreign Ministry has not provided any details about her
case. But a website set up by supporters (freesolouki.org) claims she
was acquitted last week and allowed to leave Iran.

In July [2007], an unknown assailant in Tehran attacked Solouki. Her
facial injuries required four separate operations. But while still in
pain from the surgeries, she tells Radio Farda that what’s most
haunting now are the memories of her imprisonment.

"I heard the cries and yelling of other women prisoners," she says.
"I thought that they were terrorists, but when I asked about it, the
answer was that they were women activists arrested during the
ceremony of March 8 [International Women’s Day]. I couldn’t tell
whether this answer was tragic or comic."

But tragic seems to best describe Evin, which includes a much-feared
wing that is thought to be run by Iran’s secret services. In recent
months, the prison’s ranks have swelled with students, women’s rights
activists, journalists, and others amid a fierce crackdown on dissent
by the Iranian government.

"I have heard some things about Guantanamo Bay — that terrorists are
kept there," Solouki says. "But I can’t believe there could be a
place in the world with so many students, intellectuals, writers, and
women’s rights activists [as Evin prison]."

Solouki has always denied the charges against her, saying that her
documentary had not yet been filmed at the time of her arrest and
that none of the equipment seized from her gave any indication of the
film’s content.

She was granted a research license by the Iranian Ministry of Islamic
Culture and Guidance to film a documentary on the burial traditions
of religious-minority communities such as Armenian Christians, Jews,
and Zoroastrians. She says the authorities had prior knowledge of her
planned activities, such as the locations where she wanted to film,
including a particular cemetery on the outskirts of Tehran.

Not just any cemetery, however. Solouki, in doing her research, was
suddenly captivated by an area at the Khavaran Cemetery. She
describes it as "totally different" from the other areas where she
had been filming. That’s because the cemetery reportedly contains a
mass grave of regime opponents executed in the summer and fall of
1988.

How many people were buried there has never been established.
However, estimates generally point to more than 2,800 killed, with
their bodies buried in different areas around the country, not just
at Khavaran Cemetery. Most were opposition leftists and mujahedin
members taken from jail and summarily executed. Solouki says
authorities may have believed that she intended to make a film
critical of the executions.

"When I came across that reality, I couldn’t turn off my camera," she
says. "This is apparently part of Iran’s history, but later I had a
talk with professor Aghajari, who teaches at the Tarbiat Modaress
University. He said, ‘No, this is not part of Iran’s history, and
this has not entered Iran’s history.’"

Solouki says the academic "even warned me that anyone who researched
that part of Iran’s past — not history — would be persecuted,
because it is likely that bringing up this case, the Khavaran case —
would take Iran and those in power who were involved to international
courts."

During her ordeal, Solouki says she often felt her life to be
endangered, and even briefly sought refuge at the French Embassy in
Tehran. But in the end, she was fortunate.

Unlike Zahra Kazemi, a 54-year-old Iranian-Canadian photographer who
was beaten to death at Ervin prison in 2003, Solouki has survived.
Now, she plans to make a film about her story, to tell the world
about what she endured inside Evin prison — and what scores of
dissidents continue to suffer there daily.