The Plano Star recently conducted an interview with the wife and son of Farhang Mavaddat, a Baha’i who was executed with two other members of the Tehran Local Spiritual Assembly on trumped-up charges of espionage and insulting religion in 1981. In the interview, Farhang’s wife, Mehri, described the inhumane conditions that her husband was held in. During her short visits to Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, where her husband was confined, she witnessed the filthiness of the quarters and heard about the overflowing rooms, where prisoners had to take turn in lying down. During that time Farhang was tortured and pressured to recant his Faith.

On June 23, the day the three Baha’is were hanged in Tehran, the regime brought in other Baha’is to witness the execution. The misery for the Mavaddat family didn’t end there. Only two months after the body was returned to the family and buried in a Baha’i cemetery, it was completely destroyed. Mehri, herself a member of the Local Spiritual Assembly was arrested, interrogated and asked to identify other Baha’is. After she managed to post bail, she spent several months in hiding, and in 1982 escaped from Iran.