‘I Want Neither Your Heaven Nor Your Hell, Hang Me’: The Day an Iranian Rapper Faced Mock Execution

Iranwire – The cold metal of the handcuffs bit into Saman Yasin’s wrists as security forces pushed him into the back of a waiting vehicle.

It was September 30, 2022 – just one day after his birthday.

Outside his Tehran apartment, the streets still echoed with the chants of protests that had erupted across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini. Inside, Saman’s world was collapsing.

Earlier that evening, Saman had returned home with friends after witnessing the growing unrest on Tehran’s streets.

“There was a smell of war,” he tells IranWire. Standing by his window, he noticed something unusual – green laser dots dancing across the building’s facade. Then came the shout from below: “Don’t move.”

Moments later, his door splintered inward. Officers stormed his flat, handcuffed him, and spent three hours searching every corner of his home.

They found nothing incriminating. But it didn’t matter. Saman Yasin – a Kurdish rapper known for his socially conscious lyrics – had already been marked.

The next morning, he was transferred to the notorious Evin Prison.

“At that time, I thought, is it possible to endure 30 days in prison?” Saman recalls. He couldn’t have known he would spend two years behind bars – or that he would be one of the few to survive the Islamic Republic’s machinery of death, which was just beginning to accelerate.

Born in Kermanshah, a Kurdish region in western Iran, he was a child laborer who decided early in life to stand on his own feet.

Music became his salvation and his voice. His tracks, often addressing social issues or exploring themes of love, resonated with young Iranians who saw their own struggles reflected in his lyrics.

This connection with ordinary people’s pain made him dangerous in the eyes of a government desperate to crush the Woman, Life, Freedom movement that had erupted after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s Morality Police.

On October 29, 2022, Saman found himself in a courtroom presided over by Judge Abolghasem Salavati – a man so infamous for his harsh sentences that prisoners called him “the judge of death.”

Saman had no prior experience with Iran’s judicial system and was unaware of Salavati’s reputation.

“The entire proceeding was theatrical,” Saman explains. “Our sentences were predetermined.”

Before their court appearance, Saman and other defendants had their beards forcibly shaved while their mustaches were deliberately left intact – creating an appearance reminiscent of street thugs. It was visual propaganda for state media.

“I think he wanted us to look like criminals,” Saman recalls. “They forcibly created an appearance for us.”

Denied the right to choose his own lawyer, Saman was represented by a court-appointed attorney who pressured him to confess to possessing a gun – a charge fabricated to support the government’s narrative that protesters were armed and violent.

When Judge Salavati questioned him about alleged cooperation with Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, Saman – so far removed from politics – mistook the name for a friend named Mousa.

The absurdity might have been comical, if the stakes weren’t so deadly.

A week after the trial, Saman’s family visited him. They were weeping, but Saman didn’t understand why. No one – not the prison authorities, not his lawyer – had informed him of his sentence.

Days later, prison officials summoned him: “Pack your things and come.” Hope fluttered in his chest. Was he being released?

They handed him a document to sign. Without reading it, he scribbled his signature, eager for whatever came next. But the interrogator insisted he read the paper.

“I read it and saw a long paragraph saying I had been sentenced to death,” Saman recounted. “When I saw the word ‘execution,’ I fell apart.”

In shock, he threw down his blindfold and went to change clothes. There, he found another man doing the same – Mohsen Shekari, who had also been sentenced to death for allegedly killing a Basij militia member during the protests.

“I said, ‘Mohsen, I got the death sentence. They’re taking me to be executed,'” Saman recalled. “He said, ‘Did you think they rolled out a red carpet for me or are taking me to an amusement park? I got the death sentence too.'”

On their way back to prison, Mohsen mentioned he had never seen the city of Karaj. Facing death, the two men made plans to visit the city together after their release – a fragile spark of hope in the face of the unthinkable.

Prison forges deep bonds. Outside, friendships grow over time. Inside, every moment is shared—sleeping, eating, exercising, talking. The dependency is profound.

Saman and Mohsen became close. One day, Saman called out to Mohsen while he was showering, warning that the prison store was about to close. Mohsen, with a towel wrapped around his head, joined him to shop.

As they climbed the stairs back to their ward, the prison speaker crackled: “Saman Seidi and Mohsen Shekari to the security desk.”

At the desk, guards told Saman to return to his cell. Mohsen was taken for “interrogation.”

Night fell. Mohsen didn’t return.

The next day, while watching television with other inmates, Saman saw footage of Mohsen – accompanied by news of his execution. He had become the first protester to be hanged.

“I don’t know how to describe my state,” Saman says. “I couldn’t talk to anyone. I got sleeping pills from the guys. I wanted to sleep for a week so I wouldn’t realize what had happened.”

When he opened his eyes, he was in a hospital, his stomach pumped.

“It was very hard for me,” Saman says, his voice breaking. “A boy with whom I laughed and talked day and night, who gave me hope, saying ‘don’t be afraid, you won’t be executed,’ was himself executed.”

A favorite tactic of Islamic Republic interrogators is routinely threatening harm to prisoners’ families. In one session, they showed Saman a video of a building on fire and demanded he confess to being present. They claimed his brother was being tortured for his supposed role.

“I had no contact or visits. No news from outside,” Saman remembers. “He gave me my brother’s details and said he was being tortured because of me.”

Though he’d heard of such tactics, he believed them. “I said, ‘Whatever you want, say I had a tank and mortar too – I’ll sign it, but let my brother go.’”

After he signed the confession, the interrogator revealed the truth: they had never arrested his brother.

Physical torture was just as brutal. When a new interrogator demanded a confession for crimes he didn’t commit, Saman refused and threw down his pen in defiance.

“He brought the pen back and said, ‘Write that I threw the pen in the interrogator’s face.’ Then he added, ‘I’ll get a confession from you with this same pen.’”

He shoved the pen into Saman’s nose and struck it hard from below.

When Saman regained consciousness, he was covered in blood. The interrogator mockingly asked why he had hit his head against the wall. On the floor lay the pen, with a piece of white cartilage from Saman’s nose still attached.

The Mock Execution

On a cold December night in 2022, without warning or official execution order, officers removed Saman from security ward 209 of Evin prison at 5 a.m.

After driving around the compound for twenty minutes, they made him exit the vehicle and climb a set of stairs.

Saman thought he was being transferred. Instead, he found himself at the gallows.

A rope was placed around his neck. A man who sounded like a cleric began reciting the Quran. The surreal horror of the moment washed over him.

“I didn’t expect them to bring me down,” Saman said. “I thought they needed a sacrifice to scare people. I honestly wasn’t thinking about anything except for it to end quickly.”

Numb with cold and terror, he called out: “Sir, I want neither your heaven nor your hell, pull me up, I’m freezing.”

The Quran reciter instructed the executioners: “This boy is good. I’ve seen him during interrogations. Throw the noose knot crookedly so his neck breaks quickly and he doesn’t suffocate and suffer.”

Saman had written his will and clutched it in his hand. They tore it away. Minutes stretched into eternity as he stood with the noose around his neck, waiting for the drop.

Then, a radio crackled. The same voice said: “Boys, bring him down. The Haji said it’s canceled.”

Hearing these words, Saman’s legs gave way. He collapsed. Guards supported him as they removed him from the gallows – a psychological torture meant to destroy him.

Another Friend Lost

At Greater Tehran Prison, Saman became close friends with Mohammad Ghobadlou, who slept in the bunk above him.

Mohammad, diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had been sentenced to death for allegedly attacking motorcycle officers and killing one during the protests.

Later, at Rajaei Shahr Prison, their paths crossed again. During a family visit, Saman felt hands cover his eyes from behind.

“Guess who I am?” a voice asked.

Turning, he saw Mohammad, smiling – a brief light in the darkness of their circumstances.

But that light, too, was extinguished. On January 23, 2023, despite international appeals and the efforts of human rights activists, Mohammad Ghobadlou was executed.

“They took Mohammad Ghobadlou for execution. That same night, his family had gathered outside the prison,” Saman recalls. “In the morning, we were watching TV when they announced his execution. I just sat there crying until noon. All the guys in the ward were distraught.”

The loss devastated Saman. “For your fellow citizen to be executed for something they didn’t do – just because they shouted for freedom – is unbearable. Imagine living with that person, sharing memories. It’s very hard to let go of someone like that, especially when they’re taken from your side and killed.”

Remembering his friend, Saman describes Mohammad as “a very polite, quiet, and sweet boy. He minded his own business and focused on his own life. Even in prison, he never bothered anyone. He was shy about everything, always uncomfortable. He was a person of character.”

While Saman endured the physical and psychological torment of imprisonment, his life outside the prison walls was unraveling.

His wife, who was eight months pregnant when his death sentence was announced, suffered a miscarriage upon hearing the news.

The relationship couldn’t withstand the strain of his incarceration and the looming threat of execution. They separated, adding yet another layer of loss to Saman’s ordeal.

In April 2024, after months of international pressure, Saman’s lawyer announced on Twitter that his client had been saved from execution. The nightmare of death row had ended, but its effects would never fully disappear.

Trying to rebuild his life in Iran proved impossible. Despite being reprieve, security forces continued to harass him, making any semblance of a normal life unattainable.

Eventually, Saman made the painful decision to leave his homeland, seeking a future where he could continue his artistic work free from the constant shadow of persecution.

From the safety of exile, Saman reflected on his experience ith Iran’s death penalty system: “When one person is executed, it’s not just them who dies – their family and loved ones die too. They can no longer live.”

In a bitter irony, Saman – who had endured the psychological torture of anticipating his own execution – found the uncertainty of imprisonment ultimately more crushing.

“Dying is easy,” he says, “but imprisonment is much worse than execution. I was in limbo in prison, and I was the only one who wrote to Gholamhossein Ejei, the head of the judiciary, asking to be executed so I could get out of the uncertainty.”

Today, Saman Yasin stands as a witness to one of the darkest chapters in Iran’s recent history. At least nine protesters from the Woman, Life, Freedom movement have been executed, with many more still on death row.

When he speaks at international forums like the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, he carries not only his own story, but also the memories of Mohsen Shekari, Mohammad Ghobadlou, and countless others who did not survive the Islamic Republic’s machinery of death.