Shabnam Madadzadeh, now 38, spent 70 days in solitary confinement at Iran's Evin Prison, where she endured torture, threats of rape, and execution. Her harrowing account sheds light on the brutal conditions inside the notorious detention center.

Life in Solitary Confinement

Madadzadeh was held in a small, barren cell measuring roughly three by two meters. The room contained only three blankets, a thin carpet, and a fluorescent light that never turned off. Deprived of her watch and personal belongings, she lost track of time, unsure whether it was day or night.

The silence was frequently broken by the screams of other women being beaten and raped. "You hear people screaming, crying, begging. Sometimes you imagine the voices are your family members," she recounts. "They want you to hear it and they want you to break."

Arrest and Interrogation

Madadzadeh was arrested in Tehran in 2009 at the age of 21 and sentenced to five years in prison for opposing the regime. At the time, she was studying computer science and involved in Iran's student protest movement during Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency.

On the day of her arrest, she was traveling by taxi when intelligence officers stopped the vehicle. "They did not show identification or explain anything," she says. "At first, I didn't even understand I was being arrested—it felt like a kidnapping."

Torture and Threats

Madadzadeh was taken to Section 209 of Evin Prison, controlled by the intelligence services. Interrogators demanded she confess to links with the MEK, an exiled opposition group, and participate in a televised confession. When she refused, she was severely beaten with sticks, chairs, and whips.

The guards threatened to rape her, taunting that nobody would hear her screams. One of the most traumatic moments came when they forced her to watch her brother being beaten during an interrogation. "They wanted him to make a false confession and they wanted him to convince me to make one too," she says.

Psychological Torment

Interrogators threatened to execute both Madadzadeh and her brother, saying they would execute him first as she watched. "You will see him for the last time," they taunted her. The constant mental torture was worse than the beatings, as the men routinely threatened to arrest and torture other members of her family.

"They told me my parents and friends were already in custody. They said nobody knew where I was and nobody would help me," she recalls. "Every night I stayed awake waiting for them to come. I wanted to be awake if they came to take me to my execution."

Witnessing Rape and Abuse

Madadzadeh heard repeated accounts from other prisoners who described being raped during interrogations, particularly women held on ordinary criminal charges. "For ordinary prisoners, nobody hears their voice," she says. "Many of them were poor women with nobody protecting them."

One woman she met had been repeatedly raped during interrogations until she signed a confession. "She was a mother of two children," Madadzadeh says. "She refused to confess at first. But after repeated rape and torture, she finally confessed."