Bernard Phelan recounts harrowing experiences as state hostage in Iran

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