O.C. man describes his ordeal in Iranian prison

As days stretched into weeks and weeks into months, Ali Shakeri searched for optimism in his squalid Iranian prison cell, where the only thing between him and the floor at night was a thin blanket. Fearful and disoriented from endless interrogations and little contact with the outside world, Shakeri had to ask his guards what day it was.

“The loneliness was the lowest point of my life,” Shakeri said Sunday of his 140 days in an Iranian prison.

It was his first in-depth interview since returning to the United States on Tuesday.

Shakeri, 59, a Lake Forest mortgage broker and peace activist, was among four Iranian Americans taken into custody in Iran recently for what authorities said were national security concerns. Shakeri, a board member of UC Irvine’s Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, has advocated democratic reforms in Iran.

Uncertainty over his fate dominated his thoughts during his months in solitary confinement. Home was a 9-by-15-foot cell with a sink as its sole furnishing. His days contained contacts only with passing guards and his interrogators

At least 70 times, Shakeri was blindfolded and taken to a room where he sat facing a wall and was peppered with questions for hours.

He declined to say exactly what he was asked, because he might have to return to an Iranian court after posting his brother’s Tehran home as collateral for bail.

Shakeri believes he was imprisoned for political reasons because he was promoting diplomacy amid a war of words between Iran and the United States.

“I was a victim of the international problem of confrontation between Iran and the U.S.,” he said. “You talk about love, you talk about peace, you talk about human rights, but it wasn’t until I was a prisoner that I saw how important that was.”

He said he holds no grudge against the Iranian government, even though he was held for more than four months without being charged.

“I’m upset, I’m sad, I’m disappointed, but I don’t have any feeling of revenge or agony,” he said of his captors, who never mistreated or even handcuffed him.

His five-week trip to Iran to visit his ailing mother, who died of heart complications while he was there, turned into an ordeal at the Tehran airport as he prepared to leave May 8.

Six security agents walked up behind him and said, “Come here, Mr. Shakeri,” leading him into an airport basement.

Shakeri thought they had him confused with someone else, and offered the men cookies and pistachios, a customary Iranian gesture of courtesy.

After he was questioned for more than an hour, he was driven to the notorious Evin prison.

Shakeri knew it was where political prisoners are held indefinitely in wretched conditions.

“You have to be our guest for a few days,” one agent said.

But as the interrogations began, Shakeri soon realized he was seen as a threat. He went three months without being allowed a phone call, and the isolation began to take its toll on his spirits.

“I lost confidence, I lost my hope, and there were times when I felt helpless,” he said.

To pass time, he read 37 books. For exercise, he walked in circles around his cell and did push-ups and sit-ups.

His trimmed mustache sprouted into a beard because he was allowed to shave only every 2 weeks.

Though he was provided three meals a day, he lost 20 pounds. He couldn’t sleep well under a fluorescent light that was never turned off.

He would slide a piece of cardboard under his door to signal to guards that he needed something, and they would address him through a small, barred window in an iron door.

Every other day, guards would let him into a cell with a glass ceiling and a window where he could spend time in sunlight.

After about two months, he was transferred to a cell where he briefly enjoyed the company of a roommate and a television.

He thought it was a sign that he would soon be released.

But the guards transferred him back to another solitary cell and the interrogations resumed. “Not knowing my destiny kept me in the air and imbalanced,” he said.

Then, in early September, the interrogations suddenly stopped. Shakeri was unsure whether this was a good or bad sign. Had they collected enough information to file charges against him? Or was he to be released?

Ten days later, he was freed.

He wasn’t told why. It could have been the letters friends, family and colleagues sent to Iranian authorities, or the efforts of the lawyer his family hired in Tehran.

It could have been his son Kaveh’s visit to New York, where he met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad just hours before Shakeri was released.

Shakeri believes he convinced his captors he wasn’t a threat.

When he walked out of prison Sept. 24, he wept as he embraced his brother, brother-in-law and lawyer

The first person he called was his wife, Zohreh.

“I just called to tell you I love you,” he said.

Two weeks later, his passport returned, he finally relaxed as his plane left the airport where he had been unexpectedly arrested, bound for London, then home.

tony.barboza@latimes.com