Witness Statement of Habibollah Sarbazi

June 20, 2020

18 minutes read

Name: Habibollah Bozorgzadeh (known as Sarbazi)

Place of Birth: Iranshahr, Iran

Date of Birth: 1986

Occupation: Head of Baluchi Activists Campaign

Interviewing Organization: Iran Human Rights Documentation Center (IHRDC)

Date of Interview: January 20, 2018

Interviewer: IHRDC Staff

This statement was prepared pursuant to an interview through Skype with Mr. Sarbazi. It was approved by Mr. Sarbazi on x. There are 49 paragraphs in the statement.

The views and opinions of the witness expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center.

Statement

Introduction

After finishing high school, due to being raised in a religious family and having kinship with the prominent clerics in the region, I started attending the seminary in our district. For a while I studied at Makki School in Zahedan under the mentorship of Molavi Abdul-Hamid. Then I went to Dar-al-Forqan religious school in Chah Jamal.

Detention

One the night of 13 December 2007, as I was resting in my room in the seminary, someone banged on the door of my room. It was 3 am. I woke up and opened the door. The first thing I saw was a gun. Several armed persons immediately entered the room. Two of my friends were staying with me that night. They told us to dress up and get out.

When we went out, they asked, “Which one of you is Yousef?” One of my friends was Molavi Yousef Sohrab Zehi and the other was Ebrahim. The agents were looking for Yousef, but they arrested Ebrahim and me too.

They handcuffed Ebrahim and Yousef to each other. They also handcuffed me. Then they took us out of the seminary while insulting and beating us. There was a Toyota pick-up truck outside the seminary building. As we got closer, I saw Abdul-Qoddus Mollazadeh, the head of the Molavi School, his son Abdul-Rashid, and his son-in-law Zakaria. All had been arrested in their pajamas at their homes. Their hands were tied from behind, and they had been placed on the back of that truck.

Molavi Abdul-Qoddus is very respected in our area. He was the Friday Prayer Imam of Chah Jamal mosque and the head of two religious schools. They told us to get on the back of the truck. They hit our heads using their gun stocks, and they told us to keep our heads down and not move.

Except for a few agents guarding the truck, the rest of them went away. We were kept there for about an hour. We heard gunshots from a distance not too far away. After an hour, when the uproar and gunshots ended, a man holding a walkie-talkie approached us and said, “Get them down.” The agents made us disembark the vehicle, threw us down to the ground, and started beating us. They were even hitting us on the head. They were squashing our heads with their boots, kicking us in the side, and calling us “terrorists.”

Meanwhile, several other people who had been detained were brought to over to where we were. They were ordinary folks who had come to the street from their homes to go to mosque or perhaps run an errand. They all had been arrested. One of the detainees was a Friday Prayer Imam at a local mosque. They grabbed him by the collar from the back, asking if he knew any of us. He looked at us and, out of extreme horror, said, “No, I don’t know them”. They threw him to the ground and gave him a hard beating. Molavi Yousef and Molavi Abdul-Qoddus were the ones who were also beaten far more than the others.

They blindfolded us with cloths, gamucha[1], and the like. They placed us in several cars and drove us off. I was focusing on the route despite being blindfolded. Since Iranshahr is a small town, I could recognize the route. They took us Iranshahr’s Ministry of Intelligence detention center on Moallem Street.

Detention Center of Iranshahr Ministry of Intelligence

At the detention center, we were taken out of the cars and queued up. They passed us through a small door and a couple of other doors. While in the line, we were being punched, kicked, and sworn at. It is a very tough situation when you are blindfolded and do not know where you are being hit from. They eventually took me to a small cell. They asked me to change my clothes and wear the prison uniform. I did it in their presence. I had to take off my clothes in front of them. The prison uniform was thin. It was cold, and the cell had ceramic flooring. They gave us no food or blankets.

Interrogation

During interrogation they asked, “Where did you get the weapon? How did you intend to go through with your operation? What was your role in the operation?” I told them I did not have the slightest idea what they were talking about. Nevertheless, they insisted on their questions. They punched and kicked me on the head and harshly pinched my ears and abdomen.

After being interrogated for three days, they took me out of the cell on the fourth day. They blindfolded and handcuffed me. The handcuffs were fastened from behind very tightly in a way that was causing me severe pain and bruising.

They placed me in a car with another person. We arrived at Zahedan after four hours of driving while being blindfolded and handcuffed without the slightest ability to move. My body was in great pain. On several occasions along the way, as I tried to move my body a little to prevent my hands and legs from becoming stiff and the ensuing pain, they punched me on the head. Along the way, the officers were listening to music and eating something that sounded like splitting sunflower seeds.

Torture at Zahedan’s Ministry of Intelligence Detention Center

When we arrived at the detention center, they took custody of us and started insulting and beating us right away. A strong man was holding me by the neck from behind and slamming me against the walls and doors. I was taken to a cell in which two persons were being held for drug related offenses. On one of those early days they took me into a room and left. After a while when they did not show up, I cautiously removed the blindfolds. There was an iron bed in the room along with torture devices such as cables, pipes, whips, and electroshock weapons.

They then came and tied me to the bed. They poured cold water on me and started beating me while calling me a terrorist. Every cable strike on my back was so severe, and the cable was so thick, that I was convinced it would break my back with the next blow. Then they took me to the prison infirmary. There I was asked about my health and, being inexperienced in this regard, I told them that I was in perfect health.

If someone has a heart condition, for instance, they take is easier on him or her. But since I told them that I was perfectly healthy, they beat me more often from then on, with both cables and whips. They flogged me on the back, buttocks, legs, and feet. They asked me to confess and sign papers.

The “Good” Interrogator

One day they took me to be questioned by an interrogator named Mohammadi. I was beaten badly the day before. There was a heater in Mr. Mohammadi’s room, and it was warm. There were also chairs. He talked to me in a warm tone and asked for tea and fruit drinks. “How are you?” he asked me. “We didn’t like to see you in this state. What’s new? Are you in good spirits? Do you have a girlfriend? Have some tea”. In short, he was trying to flatter me and seem very relaxed and friendly to create an emotional connection with me.

“Why are you beating us? Why do you torture us?” I asked. He said, “Those who do are one group, and we are another. I tell them not to torture you, but that requires you to cooperate with us in the case. If you refuse to cooperate, they will take your case from us and give it back to the same group. Their method is different from ours”. Then he told me to state this and that. I said that knew nothing about what they wanted.

He showed me a picture of one of those killed. At that point I realized that many people had been killed in the clash we were hearing during the night that we were detained. The torture, beating, and being tied up to the bed started again after I refused to confess. After a few days, I was taken back to Mohammadi, the interrogator. This was repeated several times.

The torture and interrogation continued for 23 days. With all the beating, insults, and humiliation, those 23 days were truly like hell. At midnight, they would kick on the cell doors, threaten, and read the riot act for what was going to happen the next day, making it impossible for us to sleep. There was no good food or open-air time. One time that I protested about not having open air for 15 days, they took me from the cell to the open-air space and brought me back while beating me all the way there and all the way back.

The “Little Giant”

“Little Giant” was the name we had chosen for one of the torturers. He was very strong, and he had a very big physique and a scary hoarse voice. He had such big hands that when he would grab me by the neck I knew too well that he could easily twist my neck. The human neck is not small, but his hands were way too big.

This man acted like a robot and would carry out any commands the authorities would give him word for word. Once I asked my interrogator for open-air time. Little Giant came and took several others and me for open-air time. Because I was blindfolded, I was not aware of the path and got out of the line. He flogged me so much that I regretted going out.

Little Giant was both our torturer in the torture chamber and the one who took us to the open-air space. He would also distribute food every other day. I think they had a staff shortage! It might be interesting to note that on the days that he would bring us food, if we wanted more food (one more egg, for example) he would give it to us. He would comfort us and tell us that everything would be fine. It was really strange to see how he would, on one hand, keep beating us in the torture chamber even when the floor was covered by our blood, and, on the other, how he would be kind to us outside the chamber. The rest of the inmates and I believed that he had one or two loose screws!

Systematic Breaking of the Prisoner’s Will

The interrogator would try to break our will slowly and step by step. “Your friend Ebrahim has confessed and named you”, he would tell me. “You will be implicated whether you confess or not. Come and see Ebrahim’s handwritten notes for yourself,” and he would show me the papers. The interrogator said, “We know you’re innocent, but write down what we tell you all the same”. When I resisted, they would tweak their wishes. For example, they would ask me to say I received Jihadist training in Afghanistan.

When I refused, they said: “It’s okay. Just say you intended to go to Afghanistan for Jihadist training”. I told the interrogator this was a crime. The interrogator said, “No. The intention to go is not a crime in and of itself”. “Then why do you insist so much that I say that?” I asked him. He said, “A few of our soldiers were killed in that attack and we are under pressure from the Minister [of Intelligence]. We want to tell them that we have arrested those responsible for the attack and show them your confession tapes. After that, we will release you”. The interrogator would put his hand on the Quran and swear to it that he would release me. They had already written the script and had arrested us in search of people to complete their pre-written scenario. I was finally convinced [to confess].

Confession in front of the Camera

I thought to myself that I would say the things they wanted me to say in a way that the sentences would not express the idea they were seeking. They put me in a chair. Because of the big spotlights directed at me, I could not figure out how many people were standing behind the lights. I only saw the Little Giant there. Mohammadi, the interrogator, read the sentences and asked me to repeat them. The sentences he read were different from what we had agreed on before. I protested that this was not what we had planned. He said that I had to repeat those exact sentences.

They would keep the pressure until you go in front of the camera. There, many things would be different compared to what had been agreed to before. I would slightly change and repeat every sentence that Mohammadi would read to me, but he would tell me that I had not said it correctly and would repeat it to me again. When I would deliberately change the sentences to my liking, Little Giant would hit me on the neck or back of the head, pinch me, and threaten to take me to the torture chamber.

The Court

After more than thirty days of detention, solitary confinement, torture, and on-camera confessions, our trial was held at the end of January. The trial session started at about 9:00 PM! Have you ever seen a trial held at night?

On the same day, an agent called me and told me that I had to stand trial that night. He advised me to ask for clemency from the judge so that the case could be settled in my favor. Being inexperienced, I believed him and thanked him too!

They took me and seven others including Molavi Yousef, Molavi Abdul-Qoddus, Ebrahim, Yasser, Zakaria, and Abdul-Rashid, who were my codefendants, to the court. We were blindfolded and had long hair and beards. We were wearing prison uniforms. I was blindfolded until the last moment. When they removed my blindfolds, they pushed me into the courthouse through a door. There were some people there, including the family members of victims of the Tasouki Massacre.[2] There were no familiar faces or local persons. There were only the family members of the soldiers and those who had been killed. It took about half an hour for the judge to arrive. In the meantime, two court-appointed attorneys started talking to Molavi Yousef and Molavi Abdul-Qoddus, but the rest of did not have a lawyer.

In court, I told the judge, whose name was Mahgoli, that I was innocent, that I had been tortured to make a confession, and that I was retracting what I had confessed to. Others said the same thing. Just Molavi Yousef said that he was aware of the operation and had coordinated the affairs. He told the judge that the government kills our religious scholars. He named several people. Molavi Yousef said that he had never engaged in an armed operation, and that he had only helped with coordinating the operation.

After I had finished speaking, the judge asked what I wanted from the court. I said that I sought clemency from the court. When we returned from the trial, we were beaten for several days as to why we had stated that we were innocent in court!

Freedom

A week after the trial, a judge came to prison. He called Ebrahim, Yasser, Zakaria, Abdul-Rashid, and me. He told us that we were receiving five-year suspended prison sentences. He explained the meaning of a suspended sentence as neither one of us knew what it meant.

I said I had objections to the sentence. The judge said that I could write down my appeal and then my case will be sent to Tehran before a verdict is reached in two months. Meanwhile, I had to stay there [in prison]. Seeing that I had to stay in that hellhole for two more months, I changed my mind regarding appealing the sentence. When we returned to the ward, we saw Molavi Yousef saying that he had been sentenced to death.

They did not release us the next day. A week later, they took us to a room where I saw my father, the fathers of other inmates, the Friday Prayer Imams of some of the mosques in Iranshahr – mosques including Haqaniyeh, Zahra, and Al-Masjid Al-Nabavi – as well as local and city dignitaries. There was also a camera man who was video recording.

The agent asked one of the Imams, “Mr. Molavi, what is the sentence for someone who has committed a terrorist operation?” “It is forbidden, “said Molavi Abdul-Samad Karimzaei, who was close to the government. He then asked me, “Were you planning to commit a terrorist operation?” “Why in the world did you want to do such a thing,” he continued in a self-righteous tone.

I said, “If you consider yourself a judge and a Sharia ruler, do you not know that if a charge is brought against a person, you should hear both sides? Everything the agents have told you about us is a complete lie. I swear to Allah that I have not committed any offense.” I lifted my shirt and showed him the torture marks on my back. They turned off the camera and brought in written pledges for our fathers to sign.

Everyone signed the pledges except for my father, who told them that he had to read it first. He started reading the letter aloud, paragraph by paragraph, and asked me whether I admitted to what was stated therein. I said that I did not. My father said that he would not sign the letter, which created turmoil and a tense atmosphere. Other fathers told mine that the letter was just a matter of formality and that he should sign it to let their children get out of that predicament. My father persistently refused and said, “My son is saying he didn’t do these things before all of you. How can I sign this?”

Agents from the Ministry of Intelligence came and whispered something in my father’s ears, but he was still resisting. Seeing their continued insistence, my father took the letter and wrote: “I attest to my son’s statements saying he had been tortured in this place and that he had not committed any crime”.

After that meeting, the agents pulled my father and me aside and said, “Are you being tough guys now? Do you think you can do as you please? We are not done with you and will come after you. We didn’t want to tell you anything here in front of the local elders”. We were eventually released, after which I had to go to the Ministry of Intelligence information unit every day to sign some official forms. I protested to the agents about being there every day, saying that the locals would assume that I was cooperating with the authorities, and that I could not go there every day. They eventually agreed that I would go there once every two weeks instead of every day.

Changing the Course of My Life

The course of my life changed after I was released. I abandoned seminary education and went to university, which was left unfinished after I fled the country. For eleven months, I was engaged in an organization called the “Youth Association,” which was comprised of university students and young people. Each week we held a meeting in one area to talk about social issues. We would pay attention to young people who were using drugs. We would take them to drug rehabilitation centers. We helped university students with their tuition.

Since meetings and activities of this kind were previously nonexistent, it attracted the attention of the Ministry of Intelligence. They called me up and told me they would enforce my five-year suspended sentence if I continued those meetings. Naturally, I did not want to go back to prison and experience those conditions.

Later, we established some kind of a library as we were collecting books a few months prior to that. Everyone brought the books he or she had in their home. I also had an uncle who had died and left his personal library to us. We dedicated the top floor of a house to this project and put up shelves. I took my uncle’s books and bookshelves to that place and raised money to buy desks and chairs.

We then gathered the youth and told them the meetings would turn into a library from then on. We informed them that they could come to the library to study and we could meet one another there, but there would not be any meetings.

Execution of Two Sunni Clerics

Two months after our release, there was a lot of publicity surrounding the broadcast of a documentary entitled “Spider” on the Iranian state TV’s [Sistan and Baluchistan] provincial channel. They aired this documentary for three consecutive nights at prime time. It was an elaborate documentary, and it included a scene where Molavi Abdul-Hamid was asked about the killing of people, to which he answered it was religiously forbidden, and that its sentence was retributive death penalty. They had included those remarks of Molavi Abdul-Hamid along with a part of my statements. Bits and fragments of everybody’s statements and footages were pieced together. On the fourth day when I got out of the house in the morning, I noticed police presence in the, with security officers present at all the intersections. I thought the officials were visiting the city from Tehran, but I found out they had executed two Sunni clerics [known as Molavis].

This was the first time that two Molavis with strong support from the local community were executed in Baluchistan. After their execution, people became pessimistic about senior [Sunni] clerics as to why they had issued such a fatwa. In a Friday Prayer, Molavi Abdul-Hamid immediately condemned the documentary, saying that the interview had been conducted a month earlier, and that the question he was asked had nothing to do with the executed people. He added that the agents had used his statements selectively. After the execution of the two Molavis, the government saw a window and immediately executed two other clerics by the names of Molavi Zarei and Molavi Seyeddi. The government also arrested many clerics, including three of Molavi Abdul-Hamid’s sons-in-laws, among others.

“Organizing the Seminaries” Project

All of these executions and arrests were carried out in the framework of “Organizing the Seminaries” project during Ahmadinejad’s government. The true purpose of this project was to control the seminaries and prevent the Molavis from gaining influence. The project was implemented by putting enormous pressure on Sunni clerics through execution, assassination, and imprisonment. Eventually, in a speech, Molavi Abdul-Hamid said, “We will not back down from resisting this plan even if you take away our wives and children. This is our red line”. The speech caused the atmosphere to change slightly for the better, but the regime created other complications that will take too long to discuss.

Abuse by Ministry of Intelligence Agents

After the library debacle, I was under serious pressure by regime agents. I was constantly called on and harassed so that I would agree to cooperate with them. It got to the point where I was sitting all alone in a room for hours, thinking to myself: “What kind of a life is this? I am not allowed to engage in any kind of activity. I cannot do anything. I am not even allowed to attend or hold a regular meeting. On top of everything, I am under daily pressure from the Ministry of Intelligence”. I would take my shoes inside the room for the fear of not letting anyone know where I was.

Leaving the Country

In 2009, I eventually left the country and decided to launch Baluchi Activists Campaign to draw attentions to the infringement of human rights in that region. When I was detained, I established a friendship with Yaqoub Mehrnahad, without seeing each other [as we were held in different cells]. Mehrnahad was a blogger in solitary confinement who was later executed. Friendship with him, the tortures, execution of innocent people, and the like prompted me to shoulder the responsibility of making sure that the voices of these people are heard; and who would if I do not do it?

Why Fight?

In response to the question that at what point a human being becomes an opponent of the government and government policies, Václav Havel replies when he or she does not even realize that he or she has turned into an opponent. His reason for becoming an opponent was that, during his normal course of life, his life goals and plans have been stonewalled. In the course of these external pressures from the other side and the internal struggles and strains from within, there comes a time when he or she comes to realize that he or she has a problem with the system in its entirety, because it does not even allow him or her to do the most common and rudimentary things.

[1] Gamucha, or long in Persian, is a thin cotton towel often with a checkered design. It is typically used in public baths in Iran and other Asian countries.

[2] The term Tasouki Massacre refers to an operation carried out on March 16, 2006 by Jundullah, an armed group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State. Jundallah forces, dressed in police and military uniforms, set up a checkpoint and on the road between Zahedan and Zabol. They stopped the vehicles of government officials and other citizens and forced the passengers off. They shot at least 22 persons and took at least eight hostages.