Filmmaker recounts experience in Iranian jail

Mehrnoushe Solouki traveled to Iran to research a documentary about the burial rites of Iran’s religious minorities and was arrested when she accidentally discovered a mass grave of regime opponents executed in 1988, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reported on Tuesday.

Solouki, a French-Iranian, spent a month in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison before being released on a bail of $124,000, paid by her parents in France.

“I heard the cries and yelling of other women prisoners,” she says. “I thought that they were terrorists, but when I asked about it, the answer was that they were women activists arrested during the ceremony for International Women’s Day.”

According to the article, Evin prison contains “a much-feared wing that is thought to be run by Iran's secret services. In recent months, the prison’s ranks have swelled with students, women’s rights activists, journalists, and others amid a fierce crackdown on dissent by the Iranian government.”

Solouki plans to make a film about her story to expose the plight of the scores of dissidents still imprisoned.

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