Featured Image Credit: CNN
Topics: Crime, World News, Iran
Callum Jones
An Iranian man who was tortured with silence for eight months said in an interview that he was not a normal person after release.
Amir Fakhravar, the white room prisoner, was tortured back in 2004, which left him with terrifying horrors.
The white torture, which is often referred to as the white room torture, is a type of psychological torture technique that was aimed at making a person feel isolated from everyone.
A prisoner is held in a cell surrounded by white walls, completely muted, leaving them deprived of all their senses.
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Not only is the room all white, but the food that is served to the prisoners is also the same colour.
In more modern times, the white room torture was used in Iran by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in a covert detention center.
The prisoners that were kept in this center were traditionally journalists who questioned the Iranian regime through either speeches or writing.
Back in 2008, Fakhravar spoke to CNN about his time in the torture room, saying that the beatings and the broken bones he had previously suffered was 'nothing' compared to the white room torture - which certainly puts it into perspective.
Fakhravar said: "We didn't see any color, all of the cell was white, the floor was white, our clothes were white and also the light, 24 hours, was white. Our food, also, was white rice.
"We couldn't see any color and we couldn't hear any voices."
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard made the then medical student slip a white piece of paper under the door if he needed to go to the toilet.
Steps were taken to minimise sounds all the time, with the guards having to wear padded shoes to muffle any sound.
Fakhravar added: "I was there for eight months and after those months I couldn't remember my father and my mother's face.
"When they released me from that prison I was not a normal person."
He told CNN that he was arrested when he was just 17 after being critical of the Iranian regime through both speeches and writing.
Fakhravar claimed he spent five years moving between Iranian prisons where he was tortured, with the white torture beginning in January 2004 and ending in August that year.
He eventually managed to escape the torture, and fled to the US for a new life - but he told CNN he would not rest until he saw the regime change in Iran.