2024-01-16 02:53:39
Caption,
Sánchez upon his arrival in Madrid.
Article information
Santiago Sánchez Cogedor always loved adventures, but he says his “really adventurous” spirit was awakened in 2018 during a trip to Brazil.
“I visited favelas and volunteered in an orphanage. I toured part of South America with a backpack on my back and often slept in the homes of local families,” he says in an interview with BBC Mundo.
This 42-year-old Spaniard from the Community of Madrid never imagined that his latest adventure would become his worst nightmare.
In January 2022, he decided to walk from Madrid to Qatar to attend the soccer World Cup being held in that Arab nation.
But his plans collapsed when he was detained in Iran, where he was accused of espionage and spent 14 months in a feared high-security prison known as Evin, which has been the subject of multiple complaints of serious human rights abuses.
“I went through things I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,” he says.
Sánchez had already visited Iran in 2020 and that is why he did not hesitate to return.
“I took a bicycle trip from Madrid to Saudi Arabia to see the Spanish Super Cup, which was held in that country, and to see my soccer team, Real Madrid,” he says.
He crossed 15 countries in four months. After reaching her final destination, she decided to visit other Middle Eastern nations, including Kuwait, Qatar and Iran.
“I was fascinated by the hospitality of the Iranians and met many people there,” he recalls.
“I had no idea there were protests”
Upon leaving Madrid on his new adventure, Santiago estimated that it would take him a year to walk to Qatar.
“I had proposed a spiritual journey, in solidarity with myself and the world. I was collecting waste, planted trees and dressed up as a clown in hospitals for children with cancer and other diseases,” he says.
image copyrightSantiago Sánchez
Caption,
Santiago Sánchez in a center for minors with autism in Türkiye.
While passing through Iraq he heard that the situation in Iran was tense, but “I had no idea there was violence.”
Sánchez alleges that since he had already visited the country before, “not even in my worst dreams did I imagine that what happened to me could happen to me” and that is why he did not hesitate to include it in his route.
In mid-September 2022, the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, at the hands of Iran’s “morality police” shook the Islamic country.
Police allegedly arrested her for not complying with strict rules on wearing the headscarf. Eyewitnesses claim that the young woman was beaten while she was inside a police van when she was detained in Tehran, the capital of Iran.
Santiago says that he did not know much about Mahsa Amini’s case and that he was unaware that the young woman had died.
But he claims they set him up.
“They fooled me”
Santiago relates that during his first visit to Iran in 2020 he met a man in the southern city of Bandar Abbas, who hosted him.
When the Iranian citizen found out that the Spanish tourist would be returning to his country, he offered him lodging again and insisted on looking for him on the border with Iraq.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
An image obtained from the Iranian news agency Mizan on October 16, 2022 shows the interior of a cell inside the famous Iranian prison.
“He made me suspicious when he told me that, because he lives about 1,700 kilometers from the border, where I was,” says Santiago.
“I told him: ‘Hey, friend, why are you so interested in coming to find me? I’m very far away, right?'” he remembers.
“Now on reflection I understand why. After Mahsa Amini’s arrest, he had encouraged me to post something on Instagram with the hashtag #MahsaAmini and I always ignored his suggestions because I wasn’t interested.”
Santiago explains that when the Iranian man picked him up near Marivan, a city in western Iran, he took him to Saqqez, the city where the young woman had been buried.
“Via a translator on my phone I asked him: ‘Where are we going? I thought we were going to Tehran,” he remembers.
“He tricked me into Mahsa Amini’s grave. Now I know that all he wanted was for me to take a photo and post it on Instagram.”
Santiago says that regardless of what happened in Saqqez, he only had a photo of a grave, so he doesn’t understand why Iranian authorities accused him of espionage.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he says. “You should ask them (Iranian authorities) what made them think I was a spy.”
The arrest
Santiago’s presence attracted the attention of a group of agents from the Iranian intelligence services, who approached him, took him to a car, took his belongings, blindfolded him, and took him to a police station.
image source, Archyde.com
Caption,
View of the entrance to Evin prison in Tehran
“When they stopped me I thought it was a joke, I never thought something like that could happen to me.”
He spent 42 days in isolation in a small cell under “a lot of pressure” due to interrogations.
“I think they knew I wasn’t a spy, but they still kept interrogating me.”
He was then transferred to another prison in Saqqez, where he met with the Spanish ambassador to Iran, Ángel Losada, who lobbied for Santiago to be transferred to the Iranian capital.
The Iranian authorities then decided to send him to Evin prison.
He was only allowed “one call” to his family three months after his arrest.
“It’s a lie that they let me contact my family on Skype. I don’t know where that came from.”
Evin Prison
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
In the 1980s, a workshop was set up in Evin Prison for political prisoners in the prison to make clothing for the war between Iran and Iraq.
Evin was inaugurated in 1971 and has since become a symbol of the authoritarian character of the government of Ali Khamenei, supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.
Evin prison, located in the eponymous neighborhood of Tehran, the Iranian capital, has long been criticized by human rights groups.
According to Human Rights Watch, prison authorities use threats of torture and indefinite imprisonment.
The same source claims that prisoners are denied medical care and subjected to lengthy interrogations.
A group of hackers calling themselves Edalat-e Ali (Ali Justice) in August 2021 published videos with surveillance images leaked from Evin Prison that showed guards beating or mistreating inmates.
The prison houses a large number of political prisoners, journalists and many foreign or dual nationals.
“Since they took me out of Evin prison I have not been able to sleep without pills. It is terrible. Loneliness never leaves you, not even after they set you ‘free’,” described a former inmate, who was in solitary confinement to the organization Human Rights Watch.
“He even talked to the ants”
In Evin, Santiago was again in solitary confinement for “41 or 42 days.”
“It was very hard. It’s something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy,” he says before adding that he plans to use the “pain and suffering” that those memories cause him to help other people: “I don’t hold any grudges,” he adds.
image copyrightGetty Images
Caption,
A fire in the prison caused the death of eight Iranian inmates on October 15, 2022. Multiple gunshots were heard during the fire, as some inmates called for the “death of Khamenei,” the country’s supreme leader.
“Iran took away my freedom, but it gave me time to take a journey within myself in which I traveled through dark places and in which I tried to grow as a human being.”
He claims that they almost always treated him “well”, except for one occasion that he justifies by saying that it is part of being in a prison.
At Evin, Santiago used his time to contribute to the prison community.
“I gave Spanish classes, boxing classes, organized soccer tournaments, set up the volleyball net and called all the prisoners to play sports,” he says.
“The Evin prisoners became my family. They treated me like a guest. They carried a lot of suffering and pain, but also a lot of hospitality.”
He also recalls “inhumane” conditions in parts of the prison.
“Section 209 in Evin is one of the most horrifying places I have ever seen. It should be prohibited to have a human in a cell without a bathroom, from which they take you out once a week blindfolded to go to a patio for ten minutes.
“Being innocent, it should be totally forbidden to put you in a cell like that.”
“I want to ask Iran: Why have they done this harm to me if I was just a tourist with good memories of that country?”
Santiago suspects that section 209 is used to pressure prisoners and to make them speak “if they have something to tell.”
“That section of Evin generates suffering from another planet. I even talked to the ants there, but that suffering is mine.”
“I only know that I am innocent and I spent 15 months locked up in a prison where there are no human rights.”
“It was 15 months of pressure under (the threat of) a possible sentence of life imprisonment or the death penalty, because spies could be hanged in Iran.”
But he says that now he just wants to keep the good and forget the bad. His goal is to overcome what happened to him and continue with his life.
image source, Archyde.com
Caption,
Santiago Sánchez on the day of his arrival in Spain.
“My mother read an article that said I wanted to return to Iran, which is a lie, and she almost fainted.”
“My mind is still in Iran”
Asked about the Iranians who were imprisoned for participating in the protests over the death of Mahsa Amini, some of whom he met in Evin, he says: “Everyone fights for what they have to fight for.”
“The Iranian will fight for the freedom of his country and we Spaniards will fight for whatever we have to fight for (…) “I’m not saying it’s good or bad.”
Upon arriving at the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport on January 2, Santiago Sánchez was received by his family and friends with applause, smiles and some tears.
“We don’t know how lucky we are to have been born in Spain,” he declares, repeating a phrase he said after getting off the plane.
“The mere fact of waking up, having legs and arms, being able to walk freely in a country… a little different. I’m not going to say more,” he adds.
“A good listener few words”.
He does not know the reason for his release, but he does not complain, and recognizes that, despite being innocent, he could have been held in Iran for “two or five years” more.
The Spanish adventurer assures that he has regained his freedom, but has not yet managed to recover himself: “My body is in Spain, but my mind is still in Iran.”
He still does not know the real effects of his experience in Iran, but he sees his release as a new opportunity that life is giving him.
“In life everything happens for a reason and the biggest boundaries are in the mind. I am going to use this pain to improve.”
image copyrightGetty Images
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