“Respect for the law in dealing with prisoner charges is the wish of a man by the name of Taghi Rahmani who has endured 14 years of prison in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

This was my response to a question raised by a young man who asked me why I wanted to vote for Mehdi Karoubi, prior the last presidential election in 2009 in Iran. I believe that Karoubi met political prisoners graciously, listened to their problems and did everything he could to protect their rights.

I narrated this episode to talk about the manner in which my wife Narges Mohammadi was arrested and treated.

-My wife Narges was arrested at midnight. She was interrogated all that night till dawn. In the first hours of her interrogation she was insulted in the worse manner. They compared her with whores which resulted in her anger.

-After Narges’ arrest by agents of the ministry of intelligence, the prosecutor of Tehran asked her, “Why did you allow someone who did not have a warrant to enter your house? Why did you allow them to search the house?” Narges replied, “We protested but nobody listened.”

-Narges experienced intense muscle cramps after her interrogations. These cramps attacked her twice a day for two weeks. But the interrogations continued despite this. The sessions were long and the questions were repetitious. They were about the Center’s statements and included threats.

-On one occasion, Narges collapsed because of a nervous break down. Then it happened again. She was thrown from the stairs.  Her health deteriorated despite the tranquilizers she took and one of the doctors even told her interrogators that she could actually die.

-But what did they want from Narges? They wanted her to condemn the Center for the Defense of Human Rights Defenders, the National Peace Council and other NGOs with whom she worked. I ask: where is the line that divides security work from judicial work in the judiciary?

-One may ignore the psychological and mental pressures that were imposed on a mother of 3.5-year twins and the deprivations that she suffered for not seeing her children in the first 20 days of her detention, but how can one let pass the manner in which a sick person was interrogated.

The differences between the prosecutor and the security apparatus worked against Narges Mohammadi. But what about her family and what they went through?

-The family was thrown into a tough situation after the arrest. Questions like, where is she? When would she telephone? etc haunted them for days. We suspected that this news blackout would be long, but Narges telephone sooner. She said she was not well and asked that we take her medical records to Evin prison.

We took her records and explained the dangers of her illness. But we had to do this several times, because every time we explained her condition, they would say they had lost her records. Eventually, they accepted to take the records again.

-When Narges was released, she had lost weight to an unbelievable point. She spoke of the interrogation days and said she had two concerns then: her children and that civil activist Zeinab Jalalian would be hanged.

-A few days after her release, Narges had a muscle cramp while walking on a street and was hospitalized. She was released 10 days later.

I have narrated all of this to explain that why as a citizen who has spent over 14 years in prison, who has been active in political and intellectual activities since 1974, and who has never held a political office, I am asking for the respect of law regarding prisoners.

This is the experience of a man who has spent years in the political and intellectual battlegrounds of society and someone who has been subjected to prison and has had his family imprisoned. You have to be in such a situation to understand what I am talking about. Believe me.