Held hostage in Iran for over 220 days, Bernard Phelan endured harsh conditions and witnessed executions, ultimately being released in May 2023 after diplomatic efforts.
Of the many horrifying accounts from his incarceration as a state hostage in Iran, Bernard Phelan recalls the helpless nighttime cries of men due to be hanged in the morning.
“Any prisoners in our prison to be executed were brought to our block the night before,” he tells Euronews’ Europe Conversation.
“You couldn’t see them…you could hear them during evening time …crying in their cell and with their shoes in front of the door.”
“Just the idea that somebody beside you will be executed the next day after prayers…”
“They don’t execute during Ramadan. So after Ramadan ended, there was a continuous stream of men in that cell,” he says, explaining that: “Iran is number two after China in terms of executions.”
Phelan is a Paris-based travel consultant with dual Irish-French nationality. In 2022 he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in the notorious Mashad prison in Iran.
At the time of his arrest he was on is fifth visit to the country – a place he said he knew well; having written about it as an ‘ideal’ tourist destination for the Guardian newspaper.
When he refused to sign documents written in Persian – which he believed to be an unauthorised confession, a judge told him he would “die in prison”.
Phelan was ostensibly accused of spying on Iran – sending information to enemy countries such as France.
But, as he details in his book “You will die in Prison”, he was subsequently informed by diplomatic sources that Iranian police took him hostage due to his French passport as part of a state ploy to arrest French, Swedish and Belgian citizens in order to use them as part of a prisoner swap.
“After the police realised they had a French citizen on their hands, they thought ‘this looks interesting’. The Iranians have a shopping list of hostages and I was just the wrong person, wrong place, wrong time,” he says.
After his arrest and initial incarceration, he spent the night in a cell with a blanket as there was no bed. He says it was that night he realised the gravity of his circumstances as he was forced to listen to a prisoner removed from a nearby cell and being loudly beaten.
“I knew I was in trouble. This is a serious, serious situation,” he says he thought.
He spent at least a month under intense interrogation until his sentencing; and refused on several occasions to sign documents by authorities.
However, Bernard describes how he was ‘flabbergasted’ at how nonchalantly the prison regime reacted to the fact that he is a married gay man with a husband in Paris.
“Iranians are ‘extremely tolerant. However, I know how the regime treats the Iranian gay community. They hang them.”
“But I knew they wouldn’t do that to a European hostage,” he says. “They needed me alive.”
The months took their toll, and moreover, Phelan was unsure if he’d ever get to leave; given the chaotic and disingenuous nature of the regime which often imprisons people for many more years than their formal sentence.
“It’s a horrible shock. I thought that I would not survive physically, I didn’t know how long I’d be there,” he says.
“Here in Europe, a prisoner knows when he is going to get out. Whether he’s been condemned for five years, ten years, six months. But in Iran they don’t know when they’ll get out.”
“There are political prisoners in there who’ve been detained for two or three years but they’re still there five years later.”
Bernard Phelan was eventually released in May 2023 after over 220 days in prison following diplomatic efforts by Irish and French authorities.
He was reunited with his husband Roland, and his father who was 97-years old at the time, and who since passed away in Dublin in October 2024.
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