Ms Parvaz had been involved in demonstrations against the\u00a0Iranian regime<\/a>\u00a0that had come to power following the revolution in 1979, bringing with it a fundamentalist and repressive interpretation of Shia Islam.<\/p>\n \u201cThe regime introduced misogynistic laws,\u201d she said. \u201cThey said women had to cover their heads. Women did not have the right to divorce. Women had to have their husband\u2019s permission to leave the country. Custody of children was the husband\u2019s right. The law permitted men to kill their daughters and wives, and they went free.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms Parvaz was taken to an interrogation centre for six months. \u201cI was tortured because they wanted my contacts, and I wouldn\u2019t give it to them,\u201d she said. \u201cMy feet were lashed, so much so that I was paralysed for three weeks. The guards had to take me to the loo, and I couldn\u2019t shower.\u201d<\/p>\n She was transferred to Evin prison in Tehran, a notorious site holding thousands of prisoners, including hundreds of political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and dual nationals. The prison, sitting on a hilltop surrounded by electrified barbed-wire fences, would become her home for most of the next seven years.<\/p>\n \u201cEvin has a reputation of being a site of torture and oppression,\u201d Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Edmund A Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, told\u00a0The i Paper.\u00a0<\/em>\u201cEvery major political dissident that has\u00a0been arrested by the Islamic Republic of Iran has found themselves at Evin.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms Parvaz was shown to a room meant to sleep five prisoners \u2013 instead, it housed 80 women and two children.<\/p>\n \u201cI was beaten, but not like when I was at the interrogation centre,\u201d she said. \u201cI was put in solitary confinement, sometimes for months.\u201d<\/p>\n She remembers becoming very ill in Evin with an unbearable pain in her stomach.<\/p>\n \u201cI was at the point of dying,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t eat anything and lost a dramatic amount of weight. They didn\u2019t want to give me any treatment\u00a0or medication, and said they would take me to hospital if I wrote my first confession \u2013 that I had made a mistake to struggle against the regime. I said I would not.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more on The iPaper<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In November 1982, Nasrin Parvaz planned to meet a friend and fellow activist in the Iranian capital, Tehran. She was shocked when her friend showed up at the meeting with an interrogator. \u201cI didn\u2019t know he\u2019d been arrested the day before,\u201d Ms Parvaz, now 67 and based in Britain, told\u00a0The i Paper. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t take … Continue reading I was a political prisoner in Iran \u2014 Tehran will use this moment to execute dissidents<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,44],"tags":[36,20,22,14,17],"class_list":["post-561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-interview","tag-execution","tag-iran","tag-political","tag-prison","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":562,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/561\/revisions\/562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/inews.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/SEI_129875605.jpg?w=760\")