Editor\u2019s Note: Warning: This article contains descriptions of torture.<\/p>\n
Saman Yasin thought he was leaving prison. It was 5 a.m. and the guards had just told him to pack up his belongings. But the next thing he knew, he was blindfolded with a noose around his neck. <\/p>\n
\u201cI could tell that they had brought in a cleric, and he was reciting the Quran over my head\u2026 and he kept telling me \u2018Repent, so that you go to heaven.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Yasin spent two years in Iran\u2019s jails for his involvement in the \u201cWoman, Life, Freedom\u201d protests in 2022, during which he joined street demonstrations and recorded anti-regime songs. <\/p>\n
The months-long uprising was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September that year after she was arrested for allegedly not observing Iran\u2019s mandatory hijab law. <\/p>\n
Yasin, whose legal name is Saman Sayedi, was arrested in October 2022 and is among many artists who were prosecuted in connection with the movement. <\/p>\n
He was initially sentenced to death after being charged with the Islamic Republic\u2019s crime of \u201cwaging war against God\u201d by pulling out a gun during an anti-government protest, firing three bullets into the air, and \u201cgathering and colluding with the intention to carry out a crime against national security,\u201d according to the Iranian judiciary\u2019s Mizan news agency. Yasin denies the charges. <\/p>\n
Both Amnesty International and the UN\u2019s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran say that 10 men have been executed in relation to the insurrection sparked by Amini\u2019s death. <\/p>\n
Yasin was one of dozens of protesters who appeared in what rights groups described as sham trials based on forced confessions extracted under torture. <\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Supreme Court later overturned Yasin\u2019s death sentence on appeal, and his sentence was eventually set at five years. In the summer of 2023, the artist managed to release an audio message from prison, shared by a Kurdish rights organization, in which he first alleged being abused by the authorities as they attempted to extract a confession. <\/p>\n
Now, he is able to describe his ordeal in far greater detail as he recovers in Germany, and earlier this month testified before a UN human rights commission in Geneva, Switzerland. <\/p>\n
\u201cPhysically, the torture I endured has changed me tremendously \u2013 there are still lasting effects. I developed a lot of trauma after prison,\u201d he said. The words \u201cNothing can stop me\u201d are tattooed in English on one of his wrists. <\/p>\n
Yasin had long been writing what he describes as \u201cprotest music\u201d about social injustice and hardship in Iran. <\/p>\n
In his song \u201cHaji,\u201d written and released months before being arrested, he sang: <\/p>\n
\u201cI stood tall with pride. Yet they banned my voice. They forbade my happiness. They hung me upside down like a sacrificial animal.\u201d <\/em> <\/p>\n Those lyrics were to foreshadow the torture he says was inflicted by Iranian authorities after his arrest. <\/p>\n \u201cThey inserted a pen into my left nostril and then forcefully hit it from below. I passed out from the pain, and when I woke up, I was covered in blood,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n \u2018They call it the morgue\u2019<\/h2>\n