Newsweek's Bahari Recalls Iran Detention

When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was declared the victor in Iran's presidential election in June, all hell broke loose. Millions of Iranians claimed that the vote had been rigged. The world watched as they took to the streets, posing the most serious threat to the Islamic Republic since it came into being.

But the regime struck back and silenced anyone who dared speak out. You'll hear from a witness to it all, Iranian-Canadian filmmaker and Newsweek reporter Maziar Bahari, who was held by the Revolutionary Guard for 118 days.

When he was released, they warned him never to talk about his imprisonment or else. But last week he spoke to spoke to "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon anyway, and gave us a rare insight into what's going on in Iran today.

His ordeal is the cover story of Newsweek, which comes out Monday, Nov. 23.

Newsweek: Four Months Inside an Iranian Prison
Web Extra: "Mr. Hillary Clinton"
Web Extra: "A Peaceful Terrorist"

Peaceful demonstrations turned into riots when paramilitary members of the Revolutionary Guard, called the Basij, came on motorcycles, wielding rifles and batons. They laid into the crowd.

Journalists were banned from being anywhere near the demonstrations, so people stole images with cell phones and beamed them to the rest of the world. It was to become the "YouTube revolution."

"The violence. You'd never seen anything like that?" Simon asked Bahari.

"Never," he replied. "I always had a very scary image of the Revolutionary Guards in my head but I didn't know how far they could go."

Bahari took the risk of shooting some pictures, which more than anything else would later get him into trouble with the regime. He filmed a group of demonstrators attacking a base of the Basij, that paramilitary branch of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guard.

The protestors were throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails. "Basically they want to take over the Basij base," Bahari explained.

"This isn't a demonstration. It's a riot," Simon remarked, looking at video of the crowds. "And the demonstrators just keep on going."

"That's it," Bahari said.

According to Bahari the Basij, armed with rifles, started firing, shooting down a man who had climbed on a fence.

The man was killed. In all, Bahari said five people were killed during this uprising at the base.

Days later, he watched as Iran's most powerful man, Ayatollah Khamenei, accused the foreign media of fomenting the unrest. The supreme leader warned the demonstrators that if they continued protesting they would be crushed.

Khamenei delivered the warning during a national broadcast of his Friday sermon.

Bahari had no idea that he too would be vulnerable. He had been an accredited journalist in Iran for 12 years and was an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. His reputation: telling both sides of the story.

"They certainly knew that you were a fair journalist writing fair and balanced reports," Simon remarked.

"Yes, but they don't like fairness," Bahari said. "You have to be either with them or against them. You cannot see shades of gray. You have to see the world in black and white."

Early one morning, two days after Khamenei's speech, four agents of the Revolutionary Guard came knocking on the door of his Tehran apartment.

"I kind of smelled them before I could see them. There were four of them. And all of a sudden I was smelling sweat and rose water. Because many Iranian officials, they wear rose water 'cause they don't take shower that much," Bahari said.

Bahari was taken to Iran's notorious Evin Prison, a sprawling modern complex built by the Shah. Under his rule, and under that of the Islamic regime, it became infamous for torture and executions.

When Bahari was brought to his cell, his blindfold was taken off, and he literally saw the writing on the wall. "One was, 'Help me God.' The second one was, 'Oh my God, I repent.' And the third one was, 'God have mercy on me,'" Bahari remembered.

His first interrogation began almost immediately.

"My interrogator hit the wall," he told Simon. "And he said, 'This is the end of your life. This is the end for you, Mr. Bahari. So tell us whatever you know about your activities.'"

Asked what the interrogator wanted to know, Bahari said, "He told me that, 'We know that you're working for four, at least four, intelligence agencies. CIA, Mossad, MI6 and Newsweek.'"

"Newsweek was an intelligence agency?" Simon asked.

"Yes. 'We know that Newsweek is part of American intelligence apparatus,'" Bahari said, quoting the interrogator.

But that wasn't all. His interrogator told Bahari that he was their most dangerous detainee in Evin Prison, and he threatened to execute Bahari unless he confessed to being a spy.

"He told me that I masterminded foreign media in Iran," Bahari said. "And he told me that I was telling different people what to do. I was telling, for example, CBS News what to do. I was telling BBC or New York Times or Time magazine what to do. At the end, they called me a media spy because 'You sell information to foreigners and you get money for it like a spy does.'"

Asked how they threatened him with execution, Bahari said, "My interrogator told me that, 'One day, we wake you up at four o'clock in the morning.' That's the time when they carry out the executions in Iran, and you see the noose in front of you."

Bahari said he had every reason to believe the interrogator. "I mean I was scared. When you're in that situation, when you have your blindfold on, when your life is in their hands, and when they've done these things to other people before you, you believe that."

The threat of execution forced Bahari to apologize to the supreme leader and to admit that he was behind what they called a revolution of color, aimed at overthrowing the regime peacefully, as had been done in some eastern European countries.

Bahari told Simon they forced him to confess on television.

"My name is Maziar Bahari. I'm a documentary filmmaker and journalist. I write for Newsweek magazine. And I took part, physically took part, [in] four illegal demonstrations," he said during his confession.

He was then asked whether the allegations of foreign media meddling in the post election violence were true. "I think there's a great deal of truth in that," he said. "And they gave moral support for the people who took part in those illegal gatherings."

"You look very uncomfortable now," Simon remarked, after watching the taped confession with Bahari.

"Yeah, I am," he acknowledged.

"But you had no choice," Simon said.

"Yeah, I didn't have a choice," Bahari said.

"If you hadn't confessed, you'd still be in jail, or conceivably, you'd be dead," Simon said.

"Yeah, but you still, whenever you are broken under pressure I think, under pressure, it's difficult to gather your pieces. And it's difficult to get back to normal," Bahari explained.

Bahari took some comfort in the fact that he didn't betray any of his friends. He didn't name names, but his interrogator wouldn't let up.

After the interview, Bahari said they put a lot of pressure on him, including physical and psychological torture.

Asked what kind of torture, Bahari said, "Slapping, kicking, punching, hitting me with a belt."

But there were some things his interrogator asked that left Bahari speechless.

"One day when he was asking me about my secret network, the secret network that I was running inside in Iran, he asked me about a dinner we had. And he told me, 'This was a kind of dinner that you could have in New Jersey,'" Bahari recalled. "He was fascinated with New Jersey."

"I think the words 'New Jersey' sounded to him like most American place that you can be in your life. Because he thought of New Jersey as kind of like paradise. You know, to him, he had to suffer in this world in order to go to paradise in order to drink wine and have sex with at least 72 virgins, and then others if he wanted to," Bahari explained.

"So he was jealous of you?" Simon asked.

"He was. He hated me and he was jealous of me at the same time because I had been to New Jersey," Bahari said. "And I thought to myself 'Maziar, you're screwed because these guys are in charge of your life and they're stupid and they're ignorant.'"

The Revolutionary Guard was always a military organization, but today, since the election, they control key cabinet positions, whole sectors of the nation's economy, the long range missile program and all the country's nuclear facilities.

The Guard, in addition to Bahari, was also holding hundreds of other detainees, many of whom stood accused of trying to overthrow the government. They were dragged before a judge in a show trial which could have come straight out of the Stalinist era.

The prisoners included former cabinet members, prominent politicians, dissidents, and even a cleric.

Bahari said the Revolutionary Guard is in charge in Iran today. "Since the election we can say that Iran is not a clerical regime anymore. It's a military regime. Because, instead of clerics, it's the military, the Revolutionary Guards, who are in power."

During his months in Evin Prison, an international campaign was being waged for his release, spearheaded by his wife Paola who was in London, pregnant with their first child. Bahari's name was on the pages of international newspapers, on the Internet and on the lips of world leaders, including Hillary Clinton.

Bahari, of course, knew nothing about it until one of the prison guards started referring to him as "Mr. Hillary Clinton."

"That was the best thing that can happen to any prisoner, that you know someone cares about you. And when you know that the Secretary of State of United States care about you, you know that there is a campaign going on for your release," Bahari told Simon.

Bahari was freed as suddenly as he was arrested. After 118 days, he was charged with 11 counts of espionage and released on $300,000 bail. He was allowed to leave the country and return to London days before the birth of his daughter.

"When you were released from prison, just before you were released, what did your interrogator say to you?" Simon asked.

"He told me that I shouldn't talk about my experiences in prison. And he also told me that Revolutionary Guards, they have people all around the world and they can always bring me back to Iran in a bag. He didn't specify what kind of bag," Bahari said.

"But you knew?" Simon asked.

Bahari's response? "I don't want to know really."

Produced by Michael Gavshon and Drew Magratten