Editor’s Note: Warning: This article contains descriptions of torture.
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.
“I could tell that they had brought in a cleric, and he was reciting the Quran over my head… and he kept telling me ‘Repent, so that you go to heaven.’”
Yasin spent two years in Iran’s jails for his involvement in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022, during which he joined street demonstrations and recorded anti-regime songs.
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’s mandatory hijab law.
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.
He was initially sentenced to death after being charged with the Islamic Republic’s crime of “waging war against God” by pulling out a gun during an anti-government protest, firing three bullets into the air, and “gathering and colluding with the intention to carry out a crime against national security,” according to the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency. Yasin denies the charges.
Both Amnesty International and the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran say that 10 men have been executed in relation to the insurrection sparked by Amini’s death.
Yasin was one of dozens of protesters who appeared in what rights groups described as sham trials based on forced confessions extracted under torture.
Iran’s Supreme Court later overturned Yasin’s 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.
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.
“Physically, the torture I endured has changed me tremendously – there are still lasting effects. I developed a lot of trauma after prison,” he said. The words “Nothing can stop me” are tattooed in English on one of his wrists.
Yasin had long been writing what he describes as “protest music” about social injustice and hardship in Iran.
In his song “Haji,” written and released months before being arrested, he sang:
“I stood tall with pride. Yet they banned my voice. They forbade my happiness. They hung me upside down like a sacrificial animal.”
Those lyrics were to foreshadow the torture he says was inflicted by Iranian authorities after his arrest.
‘They call it the morgue’
“They 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,” he said.
I heard from the other prisoners that they call it the morgue because the temperature is so low
Saman Yasin
Then there was the underground cold room inside the Evin prison compound, which Yasin says interrogators told him “doesn’t even exist on the map.” He believes it’s in a building that belongs to Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence.
“I heard from the other prisoners that they call it the morgue because the temperature is so low,” he said. “It is freezing cold.”
His testimony is consistent with the findings of a two-year investigation into the 2022 crackdown by the UN’s fact-finding mission. It said the Iranian government “consistently refuted allegations of torture,” but did not indicate whether allegations had been investigated or why they had been dismissed. The UN report also found that the alleged crimes were committed “in furtherance of a state policy.”
A daring escape from Iran, and the cost of freedom
In late October 2024, after two years in prison, Yasin was released on medical furlough. About a month later he had nasal surgery and was recovering at home when the phone rang unexpectedly. The authorities were ordering him to go back to prison, five months earlier than expected.
But he didn’t go back. “I thought to myself, I can’t just sit here and do nothing,” the rapper said. “If I left the country, first of all, it would spare my family from even more suffering because of me. And second of all, if I was on the outside, I could be a voice for the people, I could do something meaningful and take a step forward for them.”
“When I got to the very top, the pressure was too much – my nose started bleeding, and I passed out,” he said. “By some miracle, I made it into Iraq.” From there, with the help of NGOs and a German politician, he was able to travel to Germany.
Now he finds himself starting from scratch in Berlin on a special humanitarian visa, a struggling artist with dreams of making it in America. Loneliness and being far from family are taking a toll, but he’s trying to make terms with the cost of freedom.
“In those early days, even though the atmosphere was terrifying, and the repression aimed at silencing people was intense, there was still a scent of freedom in the air,” he said.
“After prison, I feel like I have a huge responsibility toward the people. I have much greater expectations of myself – to be their voice… that means everything to me.”