Tipperary man gives harrowing account of his Iranian jail hell

Clonmel man Bernard Phelan gave a harrowing account of his time spent in a prison in Iran in a gripping interview on RTE over the weekend.

Bernard Phelan, whose book You Will Die In Prison published last year, told Tommy Tiernan how difficult his period of imprisonment was on him and his family.

Bernard, who now lives in Paris with his husband, was born in Clonmel and he went to primary school in the town.
His father Vincent, who passed away after Bernard was released from prison, ran a furniture factory in Clonmel and the family lived at Kilgainey and later Killaloan before moving to Dublin.

After moving to Dublin, Bernard and his family regularly returned to Clonmel to visit family and friends and Bernard loved to hike in the Comeragh Mountains.

When he was arrested in Iran , Bernard Phelan was working for an Iranian tour operator. He was arrested on false charges of spying on October 3, 2022, becoming a political hostage.

He was sent to “Satan’s block” in Mashhad prison sharing cells with political prisoners and drug traffickers - and condemned inmates awaiting execution.

He was released from prison in May 2023 after being held hostage for seven months
Bernard and the photographer who accompanied him, who was taking pictures of a mosque in the city of Mashhad, were approached by two men in plain clothes who Phelan said showed a card and said: “Follow us”.

Bernard Phelan described how they were taken for questioning before being separated and taken in a car - blindfolded and handcuffed - to an interrogation centre where he was held in solitary confinement.

He was then moved to a second interrogation centre where he spent about a month in solitary confinement.
Phelan spoke of his experience of life in prison - sleeping on the floor, hearing people cry out while they were being beaten, and being interrogated two to three times a day.

He also spoke of hearing the cries of the men who were held overnight in a cell in the block of the prison nicknamed ‘Satan’s Block’ before they were brought for execution the following morning.
Speaking of his health concerns while in prison Bernard Phelan said: “I knew that I would only get out by playing on my health. Iranians need hostages in good health.

“A sick hostage is not worth anything. I knew if I played the role of getting ill, it would help me to get out quickly. The idea of spending months, years in prison was just unimaginable.
“My dad at that time was 97, living alone. I was frightened that I would never see him again.”

After numerous court appearances, Phelan was sentenced to six and a half years in prison in Iran.
“The idea of staying a day longer here was just not possible,” he said.
Speaking of how he was eventually released, he recalls telling the Irish ambassador to Iran, who visited him on May 1, 2023, that he could no longer stay alive in prison.

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Negotiations followed and he was released on May 11, 2023. Upon leaving the country, Bernard Phelan said that he didn’t know if he would be stopped “right up to the last minute” and spoke of the tension on the flight out of Iran as the pilot made every effort to get out of Iranian airspace as quickly as possible.
“I’ll never forget that. Lying in the bed on a stretcher in the plane, looking at the desert below. There were tears in my eyes thinking about my Iranian friends. It was very, very tense. Then the pilot says: ‘We’re out of Iranian airspace’.”