Bernard Phelan told his sister from his Iranian jail cell 'he was going to do a Bobby Sands'
Before Bernard Phelan goes to sleep at night, he takes note of the number of flip flops belonging to fellow inmates lined up in the wing of the Iranian prison where he is held
There are rows of them outside cell doors, about 10m away from his cell and, according to his sister Caroline, he remembers their position.
Twice, he has woken, looked out onto the landing and noticed one pair missing. That’s the moment a chill goes down his spine.
Because Bernard believes that it means another prisoner has been executed.
He has admitted in a letter to his sister that seeing a missing flip flop is an “upsetting” reminder about the fate of inmates in his block. She finds the whole thing very unnerving.
The block Bernard is being kept in is where prisoners stay before they are executed.
Since her brother has been there, Caroline says two fellow inmates were brought out and hanged after morning prayers.
Caroline says if Bernard gets up and notices the flip flops gone and then tries to go back to sleep, he is going back to a freezing bunk.
The Iranian jail where he is incarcerated is not an easy place to sleep.
For a start, the lights are always on, and there is no glass in his cell window. Cold, icy air fills the cell he shares with 16 other foreigners.
Despite having a heart condition, the 64-year-old is not allowed a hat or gloves, so he pours hot water into a plastic bottle and uses that as a make-shift hot water bottle to keep warm.
The travel consultant, who hails from Clonmel, Co Tipperary has been enduring these conditions since his arrest in Iran last October 3.
His partner in Paris, where Bernard owns an apartment, rang Caroline about a week later and told her he hadn’t returned on the flight he had been due to be on.
“All they knew was that he hadn’t come home,” the married mother of three says, speaking from her own home in Paris.
“I was shocked. It came completely out of the blue.
“Details were patchy, but I got straight onto both the embassies, as I wasn’t sure what passport he was travelling on — French or Irish.
“After a while, the Irish consulate came back and told me they had found him.
“I was delighted, relieved but also devastated, and so is everybody else.”
She added: “I had been in infrequent contact with him, and I had clocked the demonstrations.”
Nationwide demonstrations had erupted in the country after Iranian woman Mahsa Amini fell into a coma and died on September 16 last year following her detention by morality police enforcing Iran's strict hijab rules.
“I think he went over the day afterwards, but I just assumed he would have just decided he would be OK if he gave the demonstrations a wide berth and kept away from them,” Caroline said.
Among accusations against Bernard are that he was engaged in propaganda against the Iranian regime, that he took photographs of Iranian police officers, and of a burning mosque.
He is also accused of sending photographs to newspaper in the UK, and of stealing two pieces of 900-year-old pottery from a historic village he had travelled to.
At the time he was arrested, he had been travelling through the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad on his French passport.
After his arrest, he was held in solitary confinement for a few weeks before being transferred to the notorious Vakilabad Prison, where he now resides.
The travel company executive with him was released a short while after their arrest
As Bernard languishes in jail, he also does so in considerable pain.
According to his French GP, his cardiovascular condition is such that he is already at an elevated risk of suffering a heart attack due to hypertension and heart disease.
He also suffers from atherosclerosis, a degenerative disease of his arteries.
He also has a “very fragile” digestive system, which — if left untreated — causes “major intestinal discomfort”. His GP has warned that if he doesn’t stick to a rigorous nutritional regime, it will affect his immune system and aggravate his heart condition.
He also suffers from chronic lower back pain caused by spinal disc protrusion and his GP says his back is constantly in a “chronic inflammatory state” which — again — risks the chances of him suffering from a heart attack.
The fact that he has already gone on hunger strike once since being jailed ion Iran is only going to make matters worse if he embarks on another on — something Caroline believes and fears he will do.
Asked about his health, she replies: “He's slightly better. He's just very, very, very weak and so we're still very worried about his health because of his hunger strike and thirst strikes and he's very weak.
“He has responded to some family messages, pleading for him to not just get off the hunger strike but to stay off it. But to be honest, I would say he is likely to do this again if we don't get results.
“That's a big recent message right off from him.
“He said ‘you begged me to stop, and I stopped’. But he has also vowed that ‘I will do this again if I’m not let go’.
Mindful of the impact of another hunger strike on him, she is asked if he is not aware it could kill him?
She replied: “He is aware, and he was also aware of what the first hunger strike could do.
“He told me in code the first time that he was going to do a Bobby Sands and my heart sank.
“He is perfectly aware of what could happen if he does it again.”
Bernard and Caroline spent much of their childhood with their father Vincent, who is 97, and their mother Anne, who died in her 80s in 2016 and their brother Declan, who died of the genetic disease lupus in 2006, in France.
“The family used to go around Europe on holidays before I was born,” Caroline said.
“But afterwards, we used to go all over France.
“We just fell in love with the country — we fell in love with the food, the people, the scenery, the architecture etc, and we all had French from our Leaving Certs.”
Bernard worked for Bord Fáilte in Ireland after graduating from UCD for a number of years before he was offered a promotion in Paris.
He jumped at the chance and has lived there ever since, applying for and getting French citizenship.
After working for the tourism board abroad for a number of years, he branched out on his own and set up a company that helped tour operators set up websites and then he became a travel consultant.
But he is not your typical travel consultant. You would be extremely unlikely to find him recommending places like Benidorm or Torres Molinas.
“He has always been into adventure and eco-tourism, and very interesting places,” Caroline said.
“He used to go on holiday to places like Uganda, or Rwanda.
“He also used to go to Romania, when it wasn’t even remotely popular to go there.” Bernard, she recalls, had had some “scrapes” in the past but nothing like his current situation.
“There would be the odd story when he’d return from abroad,” Caroline said.
“I think there was a time when he encountered some young soldiers at a border crossing in Uganda and there was a bit of a situation when they read his Irish passport upside down and he had to put it the right way up for them.”
He visited Iran for the first time in 2018, arriving with family and some friends for a cultural visit.
At the end of this trip, he stayed to trek in the central desert with the Caravan Kooch Adventure Travel Company, also known as AdventureIran.com.
He was so impressed with the way the company operated that he offered to help in any way he could from his base in France and from around October 2018, he started working with them.
He subsequently returned to Iran to visit the Lut Desert, Sistan and Baluchestan Province in February 2019, which helped him to get to know the country better. But On October 3 he was arrested and his whole world fell apart.
Asked about his case, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs said they were aware of the case and have been providing consular assistance, in close co-ordination with France, since the outset.
It said: “The case has also been raised directly with the Iranian authorities, stressing the health condition of Mr Phelan and making the case for his urgent release on humanitarian grounds.
“As with all consular matters, the department does not comment on the details of any specific case.”
Asked about the case at a press conference on Thursday night, Micheál Martin said: “I think we have been very active in respect of Bernard’s situation.
“We’ve sought his release on humanitarian grounds from the Iranian government and I’m awaiting a response from the Minister for Foreign Affairs in Iran.
“He’s a person who loved Iran and he was involved in travel and tourism in terms of encouraging people to visit Iran from a tourism perspective.
“So, we will certainly respond again to the family’s situation.
“We feel for them but we’re going to do everything we possibly can to be of assistance.”
For its part, the Iranian Embassy in Dublin says the following: “Under Iran’s constitution, the judiciary is a separate and independent branch of power and no interference from the executive branch is allowed in judicial processes.
“Nevertheless, Iranian authorities are making every effort in good faith to expedite the processes in Mr Phelan's case in light of his underlying health conditions, and to facilitate his release on humanitarian and consular grounds as soon as possible.”
Both Bernard and his family — especially his elderly father — can only hope against hope that there is a swift conclusion to this.
They have good grounds to believe that if there isn’t one, Bernard just won’t be able to survive for very long. They fear either his heart will just give out, or he’ll go back on hunger strike.
The significance of the flip flops and Bernard’s observations to his sister about them is not lost on her as she patiently waits every day for more news.
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