The Detained

7:30 pm: Basij taking detained to mosque/headquarters: A NIAC staffer got a call from their grandmother in Tehran.

My grandmother just called me, it’s about 3:40 AM in Tehran. My grand parents live across the street from a Mosque that is also a Basij base. Last week on Saturday she told me that she saw Basijis gathering riot gear and assault rifles from the mosque. According to her, about an hour ago she saw basij vehicles transporting arrested individuals to the mosque. She has been watching from the second floor window and so far, no one has left the building yet. This mosque/basij base was used in the 1999 student uprising as make shift jail and it was rumored that many student were tortured there. Saeed had his arm broken at this mosque by Basij officials in 1999 when he was a freshman at the university and wrote political poems for the school’s newspaper. Saeed was my neighbour back in the day and was known by many as a political activist, this led to the brutality that was used on him. The mosque is located off of Vali Asr Sq. in Shahid Saeed Kabkanian St. I took a pic of the mosque when I was in Tehran last summer. In the bottom right corner of the picture you can see the basij insignia.

link: niacINsight