Berlin - Saman Yasin thought he was leaving prison. It was 5 a.m. and the guards had just told him to pack up his belongings. But the next thing he knew, he was blindfolded with a noose around his neck.
“I was under that noose for about 15 minutes, I think,” the Iranian-Kurdish rapper told CNN in an exclusive interview, as he recounted being subjected to a mock execution – allegedly at the hands of the Iranian regime.
“I could tell that they had brought in a cleric, and he was reciting the Quran over my head… and he kept telling me ‘Repent, so that you go to heaven.’”
Yasin is now in Berlin after making a perilous escape from Iran. He spoke to CNN exclusively about his plight, and how he says his jailers used torture trying to force him to confess to crimes he says he did not commit.
Yasin spent two years in Iran’s jails for his involvement in the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests in 2022, during which he joined street demonstrations and recorded anti-regime songs.
The months-long uprising was sparked by the death of 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September that year after she was arrested for allegedly not observing Iran’s mandatory hijab law. (CNN)
