Brishnk Dolatyari

News Center _ In recent months, amid rising political tensions, successive waves of protests, and the ongoing security situation in parts of Iran and East Kurdistan, scattered but continuous narrative have leaked from inside prisons and detention centers _ narratives that do not appear in the form of numbers or official data, but are embodied in body language,anxiety, silence, and the gradual breakdown of the human being.

Although these reports are sometimes denied or left unanswered, they point, through the lived experience of families of male and female detainees,case lawyers, and released prisoners, to a recurring reality:prison in Iran is not merely a closed physical place, but part of a broader system of pressures that begin at the moment of arrest and whose effects continue for many years after release.

In this context, lawyers who deal directly or indirectly with security and political cases have become unofficial documenters of these experiences. They don’t face official reports, but people who have returned from within this system – yet they are no longer as they were before.

The testimony of a lawyer (M.R.) from East Kurdistan, who could not reveal her identity to protect her life, reflects a part of that confrontation. It is an attempt to understand what happens at the borderlines between law, power, and human experience.

The lawyer (M.R.) explained to our agency that she has not seen prison in documents, but rather "in the minds and bodies of her clients." What she knows about Iranian prisons comes from the exhausted bodies and broken minds of people who returned after their release – people who, she says, "were never able to return to their previous lives, because the prison experience became a permanent state for them."

She pointed out that prison in Iran is not just a place of detention; it is a "process of gradual human attrition" that begins at the moment of arrest and continues even after freedom, as if prison has escaped its walls and entered the lives, bodies, and souls of the detainees.

She noted: "For years, during various waves of arrests of activists in East Kurdistan, I have been dealing with files that appear superficially different from each other. But when my clients sit before me and begin to speak, I feel as if all the narratives converge at one common point: long silence, heavy pauses, and looks still stuck somewhere else – looks that seem to have remained inside those cells."

Some of them, she says, "do not speak directly, leaving sentences incomplete, as if they are still unsure whether speaking is safe or not. Some do not even look me in the eye – not because of simple lack of trust, but because of a fear that has settled inside their bodies and never left. Each time I listen to these narratives, I become convinced that for many, prison never ends; it only changes its form, leaving the walls and entering the mind and daily life, then settling there."

A Body Without Identity

Among these files, there were also cases that did not end even with release, as lawyer (M.R.) says: "I had clients who went directly from the arrest route to the execution of the sentence, and never returned. In such cases, the tragedy is not just the loss of a human being, but the silence that remains afterward – a heavy silence broken only by the tears and waiting of families, not by the system."

The lawyer recounts the story of one of her clients, a young man in his early twenties, who told her during his account of his arrest that everything began from the moment they stopped him on the street. "The moment they put the blindfold on his eyes, the world was cut off for him. He could no longer distinguish sounds, directions, or the path. He was just pushed from one place to another, and no one repeated his name anymore. It was as if he had lost his identity and turned into a body without a name."

The lawyer continues the young man's account: "He told me: 'Even if I return, I will no longer be the same person.' He didn't say it emotionally, but with a cold certainty, as if he had been mourning himself from that moment on. As a lawyer, I often come to the conclusion that the goal in many of these arrests is not just to detain the person, but to tear away their sense of control over the world – to break that point at which a person still feels human."

Nights that never ended

One of the lawyer's clients, who spent months in detention, began his speech with a short, silent laugh – a laugh that seemed more like a physical reflex than a real feeling. He then said that they always came at night, and it was never known when that night would end. His body could no longer stand, but he was forced to remain in the same position for hours; because if he fell, they would pick him up again and continue the interrogation.

He told her: "Sometimes I thought that if I fell, it would be over, but they would not let it end. They kept me standing – not to keep me alive, but to make me suffer and collapse." Then he paused for a moment and said a sentence that, for her, became a permanent image: "There, sleep was a crime, because they tortured me for it. And sometimes they would leave me for days without any interrogation, suspended in a state of uncertainty."

In such conditions, the goal is not merely to extract a confession, but to exhaust a person gradually until they become ready to confess to anything – even if not true – just to end the pressure.

Threats to family are worse than any beating

One of the most painful accounts was that of an elderly woman. When she began to speak, her mouth was dry; she could barely talk. She was clasping her hands tightly and constantly pressing her fingers, as lawyer (M.R.) described.

That woman told the lawyer that the interrogators told her that if she did not cooperate, they would bring her mother as well. She did not know whether the threat was real or not, but that sentence alone was enough for everything inside her to collapse. "It was no longer I who made the decision, but my fear under the weight of forced confession that decided." The lawyer noted that from that moment, the prisoner answered all the questions and signed all the papers, just to stop that image from haunting her mind. "There I understood that torture is not always physical pain; sometimes it is just one sentence."

Solitary confinement and the erasure of time

Another client experienced solitary confinement for three months. He explained that his main problem was not the pain or initial fear, but the complete disappearance of time. "He said that nothing ever changed – the same walls, the same light, the same sounds. This endless repetition made his mind gradually disintegrate. He also said: 'I did not know whether I was awake or asleep. Sometimes I thought days had passed, only to discover it was weeks.'"

After his release, he continued to suffer from severe insomnia. He would say: "At night, when silence falls, my body starts trembling, as if I am still there."

Solitary confinement is not merely physical isolation; it is the erasure of the structure of time perception. When time disappears, the mind, in order to survive, begins to create confused and fragmented realities.

Illness as a silent means of pressure

Almost all of lawyer (M.R.)'s clients shared accounts of poor health conditions. One of them said that the wing was so overcrowded and had such a suffocating smell that there was no place to breathe. The air was so heavy that everyone fell sick, and no one cared. Another said that some prisoners lost control of their bodies, and foul smells filled the entire place. Another client spoke of water with a strange odor that caused him continuous pain. "When I put these accounts together, I arrive at a single image: an environment where diseases have become part of the prison's very structure."

From her perspective, this level of health deprivation turns into a silent means of pressure – pressure that exhausts the body without the need for beatings.

One of her clients, who suffered from a toothache, said that he waited a long time for treatment, and when he finally received it, the infection had spread to his face and gums. "I will never forget a sentence this client said, because it carries a deeper meaning for me: 'Prison does not only create pain; it creates a feeling of worthlessness – a feeling that remains even after freedom.'"

Almost all of those who experienced solitary confinement reach a common point. One of them said he used to talk to the wall. Another said he no longer knew whether he was still human or not. Another recalled punishments he had suffered in his childhood. "These are all indicators of the collapse of the boundaries of human identity."

In most of her clients, lawyer (M.R.) saw that something never ends even after their release. The sound of a door freezes their bodies, a phone call stirs anxiety, sleep is disturbed, being among people becomes unbearable, and the fear of being arrested again remains always present. "One of them told me: 'I left prison, but my body is still there, being tortured.' In my view, freedom in these cases is only a legal state, not a psychological one. The body is liberated, but the mind remains captive within the same structure."

Families… invisible prisoners

There is hardly a case without a family paying the price. Threats, summonses, and the imposition of silence have become a permanent part of this path.

One detainee said that they told him: "If you speak, we will arrest your sister." From that moment, silence continued. Here, prison transcends the boundaries of a single individual and turns into an entire network of fear.

Among these families, some have a tragedy that goes beyond fear – families who lost their children during the execution of death sentences, and now face only a heavy void in follow‑up sessions. Mothers for whom time stopped on the last day, fathers who feel every time they open the file as if they are hearing the sentence again. These families no longer only demand justice; they live in a permanent state of loss, in a space suspended between waiting and absence.

A complex legal reality

Collecting these accounts reveals a complex, multi‑layered legal reality. In many authoritarian and monopolistic systems, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, access to political files is severely restricted, to the point that lawyers practically cannot have full, independent, and effective access to cases. This situation weakens the principle of a fair trial and turns the right to defense from a real legal mechanism into a limited, controlled procedure.

Lawyer (M.R.) says she has often felt regret while working on her political clients' files because of this reality. On the international level, reactions often remain within the limits of formal statements, expressions of concern, and sometimes limited and non‑binding steps – measures that do not lead to structural changes but remain within the realm of symbolism or indirect pressure. The result is the continuation of a cycle in which human suffering is reproduced rather than ended.

Resistance inside prisons

Nevertheless, amid this harsh and restrictive structure, there is another truth called "resistance for life." Among the lawyer's clients, as well as those of her colleagues, there were people who were subjected to the harshest forms of torture but did not surrender – people who were rearrested after release, yet did not abandon the path of protest and steadfastness.

Even inside prisons, many political prisoners have managed to transform prison space from a place to silence them into a space for resistance, solidarity, and the reproduction of consciousness. In these experiences, prison does not become merely a place of paralysis and incapacity; it turns into a "space for action," where collective will remains alive.

Prison as an integrated system

When all these accounts are placed side by side, a clear picture emerges: prison is not just walls and cells; it is a complete cycle – a cycle that begins with arrest, the suspension of time, physical pressure, psychological collapse, health attrition, and the continuation of fear even after release.

In some cases, this cycle does not end with freedom; it ends with a death sentence. But on a deeper level, the human conscience stands before a complete structure in which pain is produced and systematically reproduced, where arrests, families, courts, and the futures of human beings are all linked in a single interconnected chain.

Nevertheless, within this very cycle, a point of resistance is formed called "human resistance" – resistance that continues not only in the streets or outside prisons, but inside cells as well, sometimes manifested in solidarity, consciousness, and moral steadfastness.

Perhaps the harshest truth in such a structure is that there is no point that can be considered a complete "end" – neither freedom, nor the issuance of sentences, nor even death.

But alongside this heavy truth, there is another truth as well: that the human being, even in the harshest and most confined conditions, does not lose their capacity to resist. And this resistance is what prevents this cycle from being merely a tale of pain, making it an eternal battlefield between annihilation and survival.