Karun Prison: Executions, Brutality, Injustice

 

Located in Ahvaz, the capital of the oil-rich southern province of Khuzestan, Karun prison is famous for two things: political prisoners and executions.

The prison has 10 cell blocks; each block faces on to a yard. Looking out of a small window in the door of each disgusting cell, a prisoner can see a small section of the the sky 24 hours a day.

When I arrived at the prison, I was told I would soon be transferred to the “quarantine” ward, cell block number 10. They took all my personal belongings away from me and said that if I hid anything from the guards they would tie me to the prison bars, pour cold water over me and lash me repeatedly for hours, until the morning came.

I had to present myself to the ward supervisor, who was actually another prisoner serving a sentence for arms possession. The supervisor entered my name into a ledger and then said there were no free cells so I would have to wait in the yard; perhaps, he said, they could find me a cell later. When I asked for a blanket and slippers I was told that provision of blankets, dishes and slippers were not the responsibility of the prison. I spent my first night at Karun outside in the yard with 50 fellow prisoners. Before the night was over, I learned that, because of crowding, for the past three months, many of these inmates had slept in the yard, with only a thin cloth separating them from the cobblestones beneath them and a paper-thin blanket covering them.

When I did arrive at the cell block, the first thing that struck me was the teeth of long-time prisoners. They were in poor condition, yellow and decayed. A fellow prisoner, who had been a dentistry student, told me that this was due to a lack of vitamins, fruit and vegetables in the prison diet.

In addition, most prisoners also suffered from stomach ailments. For the past few years, prisoners have been served their food on disposable plates. This might appear to be a practical, hygienic measure but it soon becomes obvious that the plates are made from the lowest quality recycled plastic. Soon after the food is served, the plate begins to disintegrate, burning the hands of whoever is holding it.

Hygiene and sanitation varies from one block to the next. The “financial” block is in a slightly better shape because prison authorities make regular visits to the ward. But in the block that houses prisoners guilty of serious drug offences, the situation is so horrific it is almost indescribable. There are no hygiene standards whatsoever. Prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions, treated like animals. The situation is so dire that when a prisoner enters the common hallway, it’s obvious what ward he’s on by the way he smells. The moment you enter the block, you are hit by the foul odor coming from both the walls of the old prison building and the bodies of the prisoners themselves, who have not showered for days. The block has no hot water.

The All-Important Rule: Do Not Complain

The ward houses 500 men, cooped up in a tight, enclosed space. When you walk by the block, you can see the faces of the prisoners, many of them bloody. Many of them fight among themselves for basic survival: a little food or a place to sleep. After fights break out, those involved are taken to the guard house for questioning. Once blame has been established, the person deemed responsible is beaten unconscious with a green metal tube. His half-dead body is then tied to metal railings in the middle of the prison yard.

One muggy and hot night when I was unable to sleep, I witnessed something I will never forget. I heard a commotion coming from the direction of the cell block entrance. I saw an inmate, dripping wet, running in. The night guard ran after him, swinging a cable. The prisoner was screaming,  begging the guard not to hit him. But apparently the guard had been instructed to make an example of him, taking him to every cell block and beating him repeatedly in front of prisoners there.

Ours was the second cell block so he had eight to go. When he reached the next block, they would pour a bucket of water over his head and start beating him again. We were curious as to what he might have done to receive such a punishment. When we asked, we were told that the inmate had gone wild, shown disrespect to the warden, and started a fight. According to prison guards, he was an Arab ethnic activist and kept in a high security section of the prison.

At Karun prison, if a prisoner does not want to make life hard on himself, he must follow one all-important rule: do not complain about prison conditions. Because of this rule, guards are able to treat prisoners in the most barbaric ways with complete justification for their tyranny.

Other cell blocks in Karun include the civil servants  and the working inmates wards. Working inmates are selected from prisoners who have been deemed fit to do hard labor. Distributing large bags of ice, serving meals, and cleaning the prison are among their responsibilities. As a reward, they are entitled to flat screen TVs in their block and once in a while, they receive simple luxuries, like a kilo of potatoes or onions.

Whenever I went to the prison’s infirmary, I witnessed heartrending scenes. The stench of blood and urine is the first thing to hit you. The infirmary consists of three beds crammed into an area of five by six meters, the only infirmary beds for a prison population of at least 1,000 people. The infirmary’s pharmacy has only a few different kinds of medicine in stock. No matter what medical condition a prisoner has— stomachache, poisoning, flu, headache—he is given the same pill.

A World of its Own

Hearing about executions, knowing that inmates have lost their lives, is the most traumatic part of being at Karum. Almost all executions in Ahvaz county are conducted there.

I spent two months in Karun. It is its own world, with its own stories. The story of the prison’s electrician affected me more than others. He had worked for the Revolutionary Guards’ navy and was responsible for managing the traffic of ships and dhows around the port city of Khorramshahr. His wife was unable to have a child, so they adopted a little girl, but soon after the adoption, they found out that she had a spinal defect. Treating her was expensive, so the man conducted illegal deals with dhow operators who were smuggling merchandise from the Persian Gulf states. He turned a blind eye to the dhows and their illegal cargo, and by doing so he was able to earn close to $400 per shipment.  

After a while, authorities got wise to him and he was arrested. After repeated beatings, he was sentenced to three years in prison and banned from government service. Because he had studied electrical engineering, he was given the job of the prison’s electrician and was able to travel freely between cell blocks without being searched. Soon, the leader of the prison’s drug gang threatened to hurt his wife and his disabled daughter unless he helped them to circulate drugs throughout the prison. Under duress, he cooperated with them over the three years he was in the prison. He was able to transfer drugs from suppliers outside the prison—soldiers who had been assigned to oversee the facility— into the prison, where dealers then distributed them.

A month before the end of his sentence, he was caught. Although he had not received any money from the prison drug gang, he was tortured for a month, was sentenced to eight further years in prison and sent to a prison in the port city of Bandar Abbas.

“Here, it is impossible to live right and do right, even if you want to,” he told me.

Another of my fellow inmates was a dignified, pleasant and educated Arab, a political prisoner. He helped people and sympathized with them. He cleaned up after meals and offered his food to others. I had been there only a few days when the time for his execution arrived. As he was taken away, he was so frightened that he could not put his slippers on and his body shook incessantly. After he was gone, the mental condition of everybody in the cell block was in turmoil for days.

Karun also houses inmates who have long prison sentences for minor offences. An Arabic-speaking inmate who could not speak Persian used to sit in a corner of the prison yard. He was always busy with his handicrafts, making frames or miniature boats. He had been in Karun for 12 years after being involved in a car accident. He had been unable to pay for his part in the accident, so he was incarcerated. He had become just another object in the prison, no different from the cobblestones in the yard. Nobody noticed him, as though he was just a shadow. At last, one day, the head of the prison service visited Karun and heard his story. He managed to help him organize a grant from a charity to pay his outstanding compensation payment and he was released.

This prisoner had spent 12 years in prison and nobody had shown even the slightest interest in his fate. Yet, in the end, his problem was easily solved.

One day a prison official visited our block. All inmates stood up in fear, whispering to one another. When I asked another inmate about him, he said mention of the guard’s name terrified even the toughest of prisoners. One night, he said, following a prisoner uprising at Karun, the prison official tied the leaders of the riot to metal pipes and extinguished cigarettes inside their rectums in the full view of other prisoners so that they would be taught a lesson.

 

Fereshteh Kasra, Citizen Journalist