At Hardin Hall on Thursday, Haleh Esfandiari described a harrowing tale that was all too familiar to the Northwestern community. She was forced to spend 105 days in solitary confinement at an Iranian prison in 2007 after being wrongly accused of intending to overthrow the country’s government. She spoke about her experiences to approximately 50 people at the Hall.
The event was part of two different series on Iran and human rights held by NU’s Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies. Krzysztof Kozubski, assistant director of the Buffett Center, said the talk was intended to foster discussion on campus about human rights. After the center hosted New York Times columnist Roger Cohen Oct. 7, Kozubski said they wanted another voice for the Iranian talks at NU.
“We wanted to have an insider’s perspective on Iran,” he said. “Esfandiari is also a prominent Middle Eastern scholar, and there was a lot of effort by scholars in this country to free her.”
Esfandiari, a dual Iranian-American citizen, is the founding director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.. Her passport was stolen on the way to the airport in Tehran after visiting her mother in 2006. Unable to leave the country, Esfandiari went to apply for a new passport but was instead interrogated by officials.
She spent the next four months living with her mother and being interrogated daily, for eight or nine hours, at the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. On May 8, 2007, Esfandiari was arrested and taken to Evin Prison, an Iranian prison known to hold political prisoners. Her cell had a carpet, a broken sink, a blanket and a Qur’an, she said. She was later taken to a magistrate who told her she would be kept in solitary confinement because she was a threat to national security.
“You must be joking,” Esfandiari recalled saying. “I’m 67 years old, I weigh barely 105 pounds and I’m not even 5 feet tall, and I’m endangering the security of the most powerful nation in the Middle East?”
The fluorescent lights in her cell were kept on 24 hours a day, Esfandiari said, adding she tried to keep track of how long she had been in confinement through two small windows near the ceiling.
“The third time I saw the moon, I knew that I’d been in prison now for three months,” she said.
During Interrogations, Esfandiari said she learned the Iranian government believed the Woodrow Wilson Center was part of a plot to orchestrate an underground revolution in Iran.
“There really was a sense of paranoia and fear that the United States would use research centers, think tanks, even universities to try and undermine the regime,” Esfandiari said.
She said she repeatedly told the interrogators the Woodrow Wilson Center was a neutral organization. After 105 days in prison, and with mounting pressure from the U.S., she was let go.
Bienen School of Music freshman Dana Wilson said she was surprised by the extent of Iran’s human rights violations.
“The fact that there are these violations is just shocking,” she said.
Esfandiari said her experience made her value her rights as an American citizen. She has written a book about her experience, titled “My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran.”
Esfandiari added there are still prisoners who are detained in Iran without legal recourse.
Last year, Medill alumna Roxana Saberi was held in Iranian prison for four months, accused by the government of working without a valid press card, THE DAILY reported last spring.
“In their case, I think (international pressure) will help too,” Esfandiari said. “When you go through that experience in a country where the rule of law is dependent on the whim of people, you learn to cherish this value.”[email protected]
