'I shared a cell with rapists and paedophiles': Bernard Phelan on his time in Iranian prison
Bernard Phelan (right) with his husband Roland Bonello. After his release from prison in Iran, Bernard returned to his home of 30 years in Paris with his husband. Bernard says his husband is angry about what happened. Photo: Moya Nolan
It was only when the pilot announced that the plane had left Iranian air space that Bernard Phelan finally knew he was a free man and was able to break down in tears.
During the previous seven months Bernard had spent in the freezing prison in Central prison Mashhad in Iran on spying charges, freedom had seemed an unlikely dream. There had been many false dawns during the 222 days he had spent in captivity.
On one occasion, his friend Benjamin Briere, a French hostage who had already been imprisoned in Mashhad for more than three years, had been walked by Iranian guards all the way through security out of the same prison after having had his conviction overturned in court in February only to be told "you’re not being released".
As Bernard left the Iranian jail in May after a long-fought campaign by his family and friends, he said he was continuously looking over his shoulder, for fear he would be taken back in.
“A judge told me I would die in an Iranian prison,” said Bernard Phelan when he sat down for an interview with the in recent days. “So, I never knew what to make of them. I’ve heard of them blocking planes on the runway, so why would this be any different?”.
As he boarded the French plane flown by three pilots and carrying him and Benjamin along, with a doctor, and nurse as well as officials, he told them: “We are not out of here until we are out of Iranian air space."
He continued, “The pilot said to me, ‘you are right’. He said, ‘we are not flying directly to Paris, we are flying direct to the nearest international border.’ So, it was 28 minutes to the border to Turkmenistan. Those 28 minutes were really long.”
Then finally, the moment of truth came, and Bernard was free.
“The pilot said ‘We are out of Iranian airspace now. There were tears, laughter, three pilots laughing, the doctor, and nurse all laughing and smiling,” he said.
His release in May came after a deal was struck between Ireland, France, and Iran following a long-running campaign, spearheaded by his family and friends that eventually reached the tables of senior political figures in Ireland and France.
The Tipperary tourism executive, who has dual nationality in France and Ireland, had ended up in prison in Iran on espionage charges. He had been arrested after his Iranian friend was seen taking photographs of a mosque in October. Bernard was working as a tourism consultant at the time.
When he was detained, Iran was gripped by major street protests against the hardline regime with millions taking to the streets across the country. Bernard’s release came after a tireless campaign by Irish officials, demonstrations outside the Iranian embassy in Dublin, and a petition raised by his family.
After his release, he returned to his home of 30 years in Paris with his husband Roland Bonello and has visited Ireland once since to see his 97-year-old father. However, he returned to Dublin last week and today, Bernard will meet with Micheál Martin—the Tánaiste and Minister of Foreign Affairs who had written to him while he was in jail and was involved with the French authorities in securing his release.
“The Irish did everything right when I was locked up,” he said. They had the Irish touch, I got letters brought to me by both French and Irish officials over there, they sent me anything I needed, socks, blankets; I could share them out with the other prisoners.
“I am self-employed. My business was on my phone and my Mac, and the Iranians took it all. I have nothing left and am not in a position to return to work. I have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, my back is very bad and so is my vision. There is nothing there to support people like me as far as I know. I’m the only Irish man that was held in an Iranian prison, and none of this was my fault."
When I met Bernard at the front of his Stillorgan family home in south Dublin last Friday, he was holding up a pair of blue flip-flops. “That’s all I have left from the Iranian prison. We all had them. The Iranians are spotless, so you didn’t wear them in your cell, they were left in the corridor.”
He is around six feet two inches tall with wide blue eyes and grey hair, was accompanied by his husband Roland, and over the next two hours he described in detail his detention in one of the world’s toughest prisons. The terrifying ordeal began when Bernard was arrested in Iran on October 3 last year, while travelling in Mashhad in the north of Iran.
The Paris-based travel consultant was on his fifth trip to the middle eastern country when he was arrested. “I kept thinking they were going to tell me ‘This has all been a big mistake and you can go home’," he said.
He had been developing a tourist programme, which would have included cooking at home with Iranian women. He was working with a tour operation called Adventure Iran at the time. “I had this idea in my head,” he said.
“The Silk Road goes to China. With the Ukrainian war, I was saying, well why not replace the usual route with a substitute for the Trans-Siberian train because nobody's going to go to Russia for the next while. Why not sell the Silk Road, so go to China via the Silk Road by train?
“They will travel right across the north of Iran by train and car into villages and towns and visit all the bazaars, you could cook with the women."
Bernard arrived in Iran before riots broke out over the death of a 22-year-old woman, Masha Amini, who died after she was arrested for allegedly not wearing the hijab. He was accused by police of taking photos of a burnt mosque and two images of police which authorities said he sent to a British newspaper.
“One evening my Iranian friend was taking pictures of buildings. These two plainclothes policemen walked up to us and said, please follow us," he explained. “We were taken to a prayer hall; we were interrogated for around three hours.
"Iranians are not very physical people, for example, you never shake hands with an Iranian woman unless they want to. I knew I wouldn’t be beaten.” The guards took Bernard away and he was blindfolded and handcuffed in the back of a car.
He was taken to a prison where there were no windows, and the lights were always on. For the next seven months, he slept on a metal grid in a bunk bed, three beds high and he had to sit on the floor.
“I used two blankets as a mattress, there were no chairs. It was absolutely freezing. We would put hot water into coca cola bottles and hold them between our feet and use them as hot water bottles. You always got food, like a bit of a cold stew, try and eat an Irish stew cold, it’s not great. We had a spoon, no fork or knife.
"You wouldn’t drink the tap water. There were rumours drugs were put in the water. But I don’t know. There were these stoves in the prison kitchen. If you were allowed to cook and eat with the other prisoners who all cooked, it was good. The Iranians are great cooks.
“The lights were on 24 hours a day, they were like neon lights, and it’s called white torture. I’ve developed problems with my eyes and as a result, my vision is poor now. My joints are bad now, my back I have problems with it."
Bernard was jailed in the Centre Masshad Prison, a city with four million people. The official prison population is 9,500 “but they say unofficially there could be 20,000 or 30,000 in it“, he said.
He was in a cell with up to 15 men, some of whom had murdered their entire families, while others were rapists and paedophiles. “They mix high-profile or political prisoners with common prisoners,” he continued.
Bernard, who suffers from a heart condition, had no medication for the first 20 days behind bars. Out of desperation, he said he used the situation to benefit him. “My plan was to try and scare them,” he said.
“I was charged a week before I went into the hospital, and I was under arrest. There was no chance of a plea or anything like that, but I denied it all. The guy who brought me to get my medicine at the prison every day was a rapist. A prison worker in the corridors was a murderer, he killed his parents and brother, and sister with a knife.
“I shared my room with a paedophile and other prisoners, but they were all very respectful. It was ‘Mr Bernard’ all the time. But you were afraid a fight would break out and spill over.”
There are many reports of hangings in Iran and Bernard used to hear the agonising cries of the men who were waiting to die. “You put your flip flops outside of the cell, outside this flap, and if it opened for food or they wanted to talk to you, you could hear things. I would hear the men crying the night before their execution."
Nobody could contact Bernard directly, when he was locked up. He was given a weekly call from the prison. “But you never knew if you were going to get that call,” he said.
“They’d have every excuse for you, the phone’s not working, the bill wasn’t paid. So, Roland and Caroline would just hear from me when they heard from me. I would be hoping they would always answer.
“The first call I made was to Caroline my sister who also lives in Paris. I just couldn’t believe the work she did in Ireland and Paris, and Roland too. The Iranian prisoners would tell me ‘Your sister was on the news about you’. I was also getting letters from the ministers and the President. It really was so helpful."
But Bernard’s biggest fear was that his 97-year-old father Vincent wouldn’t live to see his release. “Had he died and me in prison, I would have died. I couldn’t live with that. He is delighted I am home; he is a bit confused, but he is coming around."
The support from the Irish was something that Bernard said he is very grateful for. His Irish roots are valuable to him and despite leaving Ireland in 1986, he comes home once a year to visit his father and relatives around Cork and Tipperary.
He and his late brother Declan were born into a farming family in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary. However, the industry struggled in the 1960s and their parents Vincent and Anne decided to pack up and move to Stillorgan south Dublin, where the family home is today.
“I left Clonmel when I was around five or six, I didn’t go to school there,” said Bernard. His sister Caroline was born in Dublin around 10 years later and Bernard went to college in nearby UCD where he studied Politics and French.
Ireland was a tough place to grow up in at the time and Bernard moved to France in 1986. “Homosexuality was illegal,” he said.
"And you had the mother and baby homes and the laundries all going on. My brother Declan died of lupus in France in 2006, he was a lovely man. My mother Anne died in 2016 and she was in her 80’s but dad is 97 and he is well."
Bernard was working for Bord Fáilte and during several visits to France he met some tour operators there and decided to stay. He met his husband Roland in 2003 and they went on to marry in France in 2014, and eventually they bought a pub together.
Roland knew something was wrong when Bernard stopped sending WhatsApp messages and didn’t return on his flight to Paris. “He is angry,” said Bernard.
“This happened because of poor relations between Europe and Iran, and I was a pawn, and that angers him. I have had some nightmares, my father has nightmares too, and I don’t think it has fully hit me, but I am delighted to be home, but what happened was very wrong.
“I want to tell the Minister everything and I want to be part of some sort of programme to help people like me, who are locked up for something they were not at fault for.”
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