One year on from Iran’s disputed election, former members of the elite Revolutionary Guard speak out
Angus Stickler and Maggie O’Kane
The Guardian, Friday 11 June 2010
Six months ago Muhammed Hussein Torkaman was a young Revolutionary Guard in Iran, working in the security team attached to the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
As part of this inner security force, the Sar-Allah, or Avengers of God, he was also responsible, he says, for the leaders’ personal safety during the protests after the presidential elections, which were widely viewed as having been stolen by Ahmadinejad.
He witnessed increasing dissent within the guards. “We have Revolutionary Guards who defied orders, though they were severely punished, expelled from the force and taken to prison,” he says.
Torkaman, 24, is in hiding in a small, nondescript flat in a backwater in central Turkey, where he is seeking asylum with his wife and two-year-old son. His extraordinary account of the depravities of the Iranian government and its crushing of dissent forms the backbone of a film by Guardian Films and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
The film features the testimony of four former Revolutionary Guards, and reveals the extent of the disillusionment and division within the ranks. Most significantly, perhaps, it provides evidence that sections of the Revolutionary Guard – a core part of the regime, which controls both the nuclear programme and huge swaths of the economy – are angry with the very leaders they have been traditionally prepared to die for.
Iran’s ban on foreign journalists makes it difficult to verify Torkaman’s claims of defections and resignations from the Revolutionary Guards in the face of the Iranian government’s “reign of terror against its own people”.
But his description of the brutal mechanics of the regime, and the impact of recent repression on the guards, fits with reports that have come out of the country since the election.
Torkaman admits playing a part in crushing the opposition in the aftermath of the contested election, but he says that he could no longer live with it and fled for Turkey in January.
“I want people outside to know what is happening and what this regime is doing to them – this has to start from somewhere,” he says. Despite the regime’s description of the country as an Islamic republic, “God does not exist in Iran right now”.
Fearful for his safety, he believes Iranian intelligence is tracking his movements. “Please no filming outside the flat,” he says. “It is too dangerous.”
What Torkaman alleges about the levels of dissent within the guards raises questions about their loyalty to both the president and, perhaps more importantly, the supreme leader. He says the doubts among the once-loyal foot soldiers have been exacerbated by the brutal way in which all forms of opposition have been attacked by an increasingly paranoid regime.
“Because of my job every five days I would meet with high-ranking officials, like Mr Ahmadinejad and even his ministers. These meetings were mostly with leaders’ security commanders. But gradually the distance got less and less and we would meet with him everyday. … I could see the fear in them …
“The fear and panic was quite evident in them, in their actions, their demeanour and various dismissals and appointments. It was quite obvious, as they were appointing people to the powerful positions who are their supporters.”
The scale of the danger posed by the so-called green rebels was underlined today when the leader of the Revolutionary Guards described the protests as a bigger threat to the republic than the 1980s war with Iraq.
Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said: “Although last year’s sedition did not last more than around eight months, it was much more dangerous than the imposed war which Saddam began against us.”
According to Torkaman, the leadership was so worried that Khamenei and Ahmadinejad had a plane on standby, ready to fly them to Syria. Khamenei is so paranoid, he says, that he has lost confidence in his own security team and has installed his own intelligence unit behind his office with bugging and surveillance equipment that allows his office to spy on their own spies. He is also rumoured to change his bodyguards daily because of a fear of assassination.
The guard’s founding principles of defending the achievements of the 1979 Islamic Revolution have, says Torkaman, been “betrayed” by a regime that has carried out a brutal repression of the Iranian opposition, including the widespread use of public executions and extrajudicial killings, rape of both men and women, and a cover-up of the true numbers killed during the protests.
But although internal discord within the guards is growing, he says, this does not mean that the regime is about to be overthrown: “Yes, there is a rift, but I have to add an explanation. If there is any danger of the regime being overthrown then all the sectors will actually unite against that … because their existence depends on this regime.”
As discord grows, the regime is said to be filling the guards’ ranks with thousands of young, pliant recruits from the countryside, whose loyalties are to the modern Iranian state rather than the ideals of the 1979 revolution.
A former guard, Major Mohamad Reza Madhi, who fled Iran two years ago, believes there is now a policy to purge older guards, those most likely to question the motives of the regime. At a high security compound in Bangkok, Madhi tells Guardian Films that he is in constant communication with former colleagues, monitoring events via the internet.
He gasps for breath when he speaks – the result of five chemical weapons attacks during more than seven years in the trenches of the Iran-Iraq war.
“If the veteran members of the Revolutionary Guard criticise the practices saying this is against Islam … they are given early retirement or stopped from working,” he says. According to Mahdi, the new breed of recruits follow orders without question. “The majority … have no idea of right or wrong – what is legal what is not. They bring these young men in … and they hand them weapons and these young people commit acts of murder.”
It is no surprise that the guards find it easy to take on new recruits, because the corps has connections in all parts of Iran’s most important institutions. Described as a “conglomerate with guns”, they have their own naval and missile units, while the al-Qods (Jerusalem) force combines the functions of an intelligence service, SAS-type special forces and an aid agency.
The guards’ holding companies and charitable foundations have a stake in construction, energy and telecommunications, and its control over Gulf ports and airport terminals allows it to move commodities without paying duty.
Madhi’s claims of division in the ranks are supported by the testimony of another former Revolutionary Guard, who worked for al-Qods, and who would speak to the Guardian only on the condition of anonymity. He claims that small groups meet secretly – using the internet to maintain contact – to plan how to help the opposition.
He cites the increased levels and more brutal forms of torture as one of the reasons for turning against the government. In his particular case, he says he was deeply affected by the hanging he witnessed of a pregnant woman.
“Whatever crime she was guilty with, you cannot hang her if she is pregnant. This is against Islam. Not acceptable,” he says. “They kept her shivering in the air for like 15 minutes until she died. She was bleeding in front of her children. This regime will not last for long.”
These descriptions match those of a former guard who was smuggled into Turkey three weeks ago. Now in hiding, with his wife and child still in Iran, he was also only prepared to talk anonymously. Going under the name Ali, he explains that he was arrested after refusing to beat protesters but was released after spending two months in prison when family members intervened.
“My sisters and brothers-in-law are agents of the regime and among the senior officials of the Ministry of Intelligence,” he says. “My wife managed to find out where I was through her brother and then she bribed the commander of that district.”
Ali describes the torture he was subjected to as routine for the regime. “The worst method … was the mock execution and I don’t think there is any torture more horrific than that. They would convince us that this is the end of us.
“They would put me on the electric chair and everything was ready. They would tie my hands and feet, they would connect the cables, everything was done with the exception of pressing the button to apply the electric shock.
“Special guards began to surround and attack me, my brother and a friend with pepper gas, baton, chains, knives – they moved us into a corner and that is how we became their captives.”
Ali escaped capture, but his brother’s ID had been seized – and he knew Iranian forces would soon come searching for him. “I was in hiding until they put pressure on my wife and threatened that if I did not hand myself in, they would arrest her instead. After a period of five or six months I don’t remember exactly, I was forced to return home.”
Just half an hour after Ali returned to his house, security forces came to arrest him. His head was put into a sack, before being bundled into the boot of a car and driven to a safe house where he was held for two months. “During the day my blindfolds were removed for a maximum of half an hour or less, it was a small place, it was tiled throughout, so it was easy to clean, because there was constantly bleeding and blood stains, they used to torture people there.”
Ali describes in detail how he was tortured daily: “I was kicked for three to four hours a day. With a whip, cable, wooden stick. One could constantly hear the shouting and the screams from other detainees.”
Ali was subjected to a series of mock executions, which he describes as the worst kind of torture. “Once it was by hanging another time it was by firing squad and another time by hanging us from the scaffold – all of these would be mock executions – to be honest there was no difference between a real execution and a mock execution. The only difference was that I realised I could still breath. In effect I was a walking dead.”
Ali said the torturers showed little sign of remorse. “I could not see their faces, I could only hear their voices and suffer their torture. I imagined that they were not even human.
“You cannot even call them animals since even animals follow certain discipline. They did it with so much excitement and I don’t know, I cannot compare it to anything.”
Ali fled to Turkey last month – since then he has not been able to contact his wife. She was pregnant before he was arrested but suffered a miscarriage. Ali believes it was a result of the interrogations and the beatings meted out by Iranian officers. “I consider the regime and its agents to be responsible for this. I am prepared to give my life for this.”
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is a not-for-profit foundation based at City University in London