I can’t think when I last came across a book that opened with such disturbing words: “I am writing this preface in the final hours of my home leave. Very soon I will be forced to return to my prison … This time I was found guilty because of the book you are holding in your hands – White Torture.” That was last March. Narges Mohammadi, a leading Iranian political dissident, had been briefly released from jail because she had had a heart attack, followed by cardiac surgery. Now she is a prisoner again, facing 80 lashes and a total of more than 30 years behind bars. Part of her sentence will be spent in solitary confinement. “I declare once more that this is a cruel and inhumane punishment,” she writes. “I will not rest until it is abolished.”
Mohammadi builds up her campaign against solitary confinement partly with her own story, but mostly through interviews with 12 other Iranian women who have also experienced it. They come from different backgrounds and were jailed for a variety of things the Islamic republic regards as crimes: being a member of the Bahá’i religious minority, or a Sufi, converting to Christianity, supporting the People’s Mujahedin, or simply getting involved in protest movements.
