Want to Know What Torture Is Really Like, New York Times?

It's in your own pages…

[The Iranian's] alienation began at age 9, when he witnessed a deadly stoning. Though forbidden by his mother, he slipped out of the house to see the commotion near his school. He saw a man, accused of adultery, buried to the waist, his head covered with a sack that turned red as Revolutionary Guards hurled chunks of concrete. … Years later, he would witness public hangings and dismemberments.

…At the University of Tehran in the mid-1990s, [Ahmed Batebi] joined in student protests, getting arrested three times. … Mr. Batebi described 17 months in solitary confinement … His jailers thrashed him with a metal cable, beating his testicles and kicked in his teet, he said. They held his face down in a pool of excrement. They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds. … They tied his arms behind his back and hung him from the ceiling. At other times, strapping him to a chair, they kept him awake night after night, cutting him and rubbing salt into the wounds.