NCRI – Former Iranian political prisoner Farzad Madadzadeh has testified about his years of torture and torment in Iran’s notorious prisons. The 30-year-old, who spent five years in the mullahs’ jails for his affiliation with the main Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, or MEK), very recently escaped Iran. He spoke at a conference in Paris on the occasion of the World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Watch the video of former Iranian political prisoner Farzad Madadzadeh’s testimony.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abrQbjGJ6l0
Text of speech by Farzad Madadzadeh at a conference on human rights in Iran on the occasion of the World Day Against the Death Penalty
Paris – October 10, 2015
In the name of God,
In the name of liberty,
Hail to Iran’s shining sun sister Maryam [Rajavi], and our ever-alert brother Massoud, and hail to the Ashrafi heroines and heroes in Camp Liberty.
Greetings to my dear compatriots and you friends of the Resistance
Greetings to the struggling and Mojahed prisoners
And greetings to the martyrs of freedom
Hail to Akbar and Mahdieh that I am forever proud of.
My name is Farzad Madadzadeh. I have recently come from Iran. I am 30 years old and I have spent five years in the regime’s prisons.
I got to know the Resistance and the PMOI twelve years ago when I saw the picture of sister Maryam in the Asia Daily and then I watched the programs of Simaye Azadi, the resistance television.
After I learned about the PMOI, my path in life was drastically changed. The suffering of people concerned me and fighting this criminal regime and ending this suffering became my goal.
I was arrested in 2008 and I was condemned to five years in prison in Evin and Gohardasht.
When I was arrested, they took me directly to the dreaded 209 ward and I was locked up in solitary confinement twice for a total of six months.
The solitary confinement is a place that you hear nothing but the gong of death and the regime uses it to break the will of prisoners. Just in this condition, the henchman demands that you appear before television and to say lies about your beliefs.
The greatest lesson that I learnt in the solitary confinement was that you have to fight every second of it and this is the secret to the victory of the prisoner.
After the hard time I spent incommunicado, they removed me from Ward 209. I was first transferred to the general ward in Evin and then to Gohardasht prison in the city of Karaj.
In Evin and Gohardasht I was in the same cell as heroic martyrs Ali Saremi, Farzad Kamangar, Farhad Vakeily, Jafar Kazemi, Mohammadali Haj Aghaii, Masour Radpour, Mohsen Dogmechi and Shahrokh Zamani.
The memory of those martyrs is with me all the time:
When martyr Jafar Kazemi heard about his death penalty he said that the struggle and the tree of liberty need blood and so much better that it would be my blood.
Farhad Vakeily, the son of the Kurdish people, always used to say to me: Farzad! Let them hang me so that the children of this land and especially my small child have a happy future and never experience torture and execution.
And the heroic martyr Ali Saremi that in him I found humanity and love used to say that he fights the regime with his pen so that the world would learn about the ongoing tyranny against our people.
When I was in Gohardasht prison, I reminded Ali (Saremi) that when out of the prison you always had the pictures of sister Maryam and brother Massoud with you. He always hid the pictures in his wallet and when he saw someone, he would give him the pictures.
I asked him: What do you do here without the pictures? He gave me a copybook that was on his bed and when I opened it I found the pictures of sister Maryam and brother Massoud inside. He had cut out the pictures from newspapers in prison and kept them.
With his familiar smile he said: My boy, I don’t go anywhere without the pictures of my leaders.
Yes! Their crime was that they had a big heart and a lot of love.
One day, we shall again find our doves (martyrs).
And kindness will take the hand of beauty
The day that the least hymn is a kiss
And every man is the brother of the other
I await that day
Even if I am not there when that day comes
Dear compatriots,
Friends of the Resistance,
Today is the World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Allow me to tell you of youngsters that are arrested for whatever charge at ages of 13 or 14 and then, in a gradual death they await their execution to come when they reach the legal age.
Their birthday is their most ominous day since with every birthday they get one step closer to their deaths.
And during these years of waiting, do you know what the regime does with them? It makes them drug addicts!
Don’t be surprised! The one thing that you can easily find in Iran’s prisons is narcotics because the regime’s elements bring drugs to the prisons to make addicts out of the youths and particularly the political prisoners.
However, outside the prison, they arrest and hang people for carrying 30 grams of narcotics under the pretext of combatting drugs.
The day I was freed from Gohardasht prison, when I was bidding farewell to my cellmates, I pledged to be their voice who have been wronged, as well as the voice of the Iranian people. So, I quickly traveled the distance from Gohardasht Prison to the Resistance bases for liberty.
What the suffering people of Iran and the political prisoners are saying to the international community is this:
It is scarcely enough to just condemn this regime in words. Bring the mullahs to the international courts for their crimes, especially the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners and their daily and incessant executions.
The Iranian people are prepared to overthrow this regime and they believe that their only hope lies with the National Council of Resistance of Iran and the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran.
Whether in those moments that I was in prison or now that I am amongst you, I am sure and I believe that the freedom of Iran will come.
We shall take the phoenix of liberty and the shining sun of the Iranian people to the freed Iran and we shall sing the song of victory with our deprived people while we have all our proud martyrs with us.
Thank you.
