Reporting from Beirut — The young man waved a pistol at them.
"I am your judge," he said as he aimed his weapon at the faces of the prisoners, who were protesting their innocence and loudly complaining about their treatment.
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Iran book publisher recalls weeklong ordeal in prison
The man, mistakenly detained, was crammed into a cell with hundreds of others seized in the election unrest. They were threatened by a pistol-wielding young man and interrogated. Some were beaten.
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"If you shout again, I can shoot," he continued. "If you are brave enough to go out on the streets to protest, you should have the guts to be brave here too."
The book publisher, who had been arrested at his office, said he was speechless.
"What kind of judge," he recalled wondering to himself, "wields a gun?"
Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has called on both sides in the dispute over the June 12 presidential election to cool the tempers of their young supporters. But whereas supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi can throw stones or send e-mails, backers of the hard-line incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, appear to have the hard instruments of the state at their disposal.
The middle-aged book publisher, who was detained in a crackdown against dissidents and alleged rioters, asked that his name not be published for fear of retribution. Though he supported Mousavi, he denies taking part in any unrest.
His tale of his week of detention, recounted in an interview Sunday, jibes with accounts of other detainees, many of whom have been released.
Some, including political analyst Bijan Khajepour, who was arrested on arrival from a visit to Britain, and reformist Saeed Hajjarian, wheelchair-bound since a 2000 assassination attempt, remain in jail.
"It's never a good time for human rights in Iran, but the scale of what's going on in response to the protests over the results of the elections is beyond anything we've seen in recent times," said Tom Porteous, a London-based official for Human Rights Watch, which has collected the names of more than 300 people who have been arrested. "We're very concerned about the potential for the mistreatment of those who've been arrested."
It was 7:30 p.m. on June 20, the day riots engulfed Tehran, when police pounded on the door of the publishing house, located across the street from Tehran University.
The publisher, who agreed to be identified only by the initial M, and his colleagues were tabulating accounts and updating their ledger.
"Open up," the officers demanded. "Security police!"
