Sam Mahmoodi Sarabi’s poem “I Confess” was dedicated to political prisoners and landed him in jail following the 2009 disputed presidential election. Arrested for his work on a number of occasions, he has been tortured and held in solitary confinement. He was forced to flee Iran and now lives in exile.
Name: Sam Mahmoodi Sarabi
Born: 1976, Tehran, Iran
Career: Journalist, wrote for daily newspapers and other publications, including Shargh, Ettela’at, Jomhouri-e Eslami, Salam, Ham-Shahri, Aftab-e Yazd, and Etemad.
Charges: Conspiracy against national security; propaganda against the regime; spreading falsehood to mislead the public; insulting the Supreme Leader; insulting the president and assaulting police officers in the course of carrying out their duties.
Sam Mahmoodi Sarabi, who holds a post-graduate philosophy degree from Tehran University, has been arrested on a number of occasions. His last arrest resulted in a sentence of eight years’ imprisonment, including a four-year suspended sentence. He was also banned from media activities for 10 years.
Sarabi was forced to leave Iran in October 2012, realizing he could no longer continue his work there, so he moved, in his words, “from one exile to another”.
“I crossed the border accompanied by a smuggler and a student who had recently been released from jail,” he told IranWire, speaking about how he fled the country. “We trekked about 150 kilometers to Van in Turkey and then made our way to Ankara.” Coveting the $3,300 that he was carrying, the smuggler robbed him of everything he had, including his medication. “He left me in a difficult situation alone with half a dozen ailments,” he said, “including migraine attacks, convulsions and alimentary disorders.”
Sarabi was first arrested in the summer of 1999 during student protests. “I spent 177 days in solitary confinement and was brutally tortured before I was released on bail,” he said. “I still carry the marks on my body. I was first kept at a secret detention center called Shooka on Seoul street and was then moved to Tohid jail. Eventually, my father bribed a commander in the Revolutionary Guards and I was sent home with a body covered with wounds. My hands and feet had been burned by boiling water and for months I was unable to stand up.”
Ten years later, during the protests that followed the 2009 disputed presidential election, Sarabi was arrested again. His crime was writing a poem called “I Confess,” which was dedicated to political prisoners, including well known inmates incarcerated during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami. He spent 13 days in detention, during which he was brutally tortured. He reported later that he had been sexually assaulted with a bottle while his hands were tied and his head was pushed into a toilet bowl. He was released after his health deteriorated. He suffered from stomach hemorrhages among other ailments.
He was rearrested a short while later and charged with forming a counter-revolutionary group. He was detained and interrogated for 44 days until he was released on a bail of more than $110,000.
Sarabi was summoned to the Revolutionary Court and transferred to solitary confinement at Evin Prison, where he spent six months. He was moved to Cell Block 350 after his mental condition deteriorated and he attempted suicide.
This is part of IranWire’s series Crime: Journalism, a portfolio on the legal and political persecution of Iranian journalists and bloggers, published in both Persian and English.
Please contact info@iranwire.com with comments, updates or further information about cases.
Read other cases in the series:
Interested in writing for IranWire?
Share your stories.
comments