WHEN Anoosheh Ashoori was manhandled into a car and taken to the notorious Evin Prison in Iran in August 2017, he was told he was being taken to the “end of the world” by his captors.
The retired civil engineer, now 71, had been visiting his mum in the north of Tehran when he was suddenly arrested and imprisoned having been falsely accused of spying for Israel’s Mossad Intelligence agency, despite having lived in the UK for 20 years.
He spent nearly five years in the jail in foul conditions, facing long hours of interrogation and threats, which eventually drove him to attempt to take his own life three times.
But through his own and his family’s perseverance and determination, he has lived to tell the tale.
In March 2022, Ashoori was released from Evin Prison alongside fellow British-Iranian national Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.
Their release followed months of intensive diplomatic negotiations between London and Tehran and the repaying of a debt owed by the UK to Iran. The UK paid £393.8m owed to Iran after it cancelled an order for British-made Chieftain tanks following the overthrow of the Shah in the revolution of 1979.
Now dad-of-two Ashoori will be sharing his incredible story with the people of Scotland at an exhibition accounting his experiences in Perth, run by the local Amnesty International group.
Ashoori told The National he wanted to convey some crucial messages in the account of his ordeal and remind people that what happened to him could have happened to anyone.
“If we as the British public are indifferent to the things that are happening around us, it will come and knock at our door,” he said.
“So we should be vigilant. I was an ordinary person, I was living my own life, and I was involved with engineering, my main hobby was astronomy, nothing to do with politics and I fell into this trap. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
“My other message is that there are two golden rules for victory; golden rule number one is always remember that perseverance pays off, as it did for me. Golden rule number two is never forget golden rule number one.
Evin Prison came under attack by Israel earlier this week amid strikes elsewhere in Tehran.
The exhibition at St John’s Kirk in Perth – devised by Ashoori himself with the support of Amnesty International – will recreate the emotional and physical reality of his detention and will feature personal items Ashoori was able to smuggle out of Tehran’s notorious Evin prison after his release.
It will feature a reconstruction of his arrest, the crowded conditions in cockroach- and bedbug-infested communal cells, and how the inspiration of hoping to run the London marathon after his release helped Ashoori cope with his time in jail.
It is miraculous he is now able to share this story of resolve and courage when a few years before, he had been in solitary confinement, with a floodlight beaming down onto his head 24 hours a day and malfunctioning air conditioning.
“All that it could blow was hot air,” he said.
“The food was foul, and I could hear very clearly the sound of crying and whimpering of my neighbouring cells. So, there was sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation trying to force me to make confessions.
“Then came the threats. They had my laptop, and they printed pictures of my family members. They used to come and say, ‘look this is your son smiling, next time you’re going to have a picture of his corpse’.
“When you are going through that day after day, you reach a threshold. Eventually, because of those pressures and lack of sleep, you tend to believe what they say.
“I reached a point where I reasoned with myself that the only way to protect my family members from harm was not to be. That led to three suicide attempts. Luckily, I survived.”
Amid the torture and despair Ashoori was going through, there was glimpses of hope he held onto, through running while in prison and the poetry society he created with other inmates.
One of his fellow prisoners opened his eyes to a collection of poems called Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire, which he reflects on regularly in the healthy, happy life he now leads – which has included him living out his dream of running the London Marathon no less than four times.
“After being released, the Anoosheh Ashoori that was so indifferent to all these things became quite active. So many good things emerged, one of them was the London Marathon, of course,” he said.
“The Flowers of Evil collection of poems [taught us] even from the darkest places, goodness can emerge. Strength can emerge. That is what happened.”
The Surviving Evin exhibition is running from Friday, June 27 to Sunday, July 6, at St John’s Kirk, Perth.
