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3 days ago
- Business
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Roger Cooper, British journalist jailed for five years in Iran whose sense of mischief kept him sane
Roger Cooper, who has died aged 90, was a British journalist and businessman who was arrested as a spy on a visit to Iran in December 1985 and spent more than five years in prison, under sentence of death. For most of that time he was incarcerated in the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran, often in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, he did not court sympathy when he was finally released: 'I can say that anyone who, like me, was educated in an English public school and served in the ranks of the British Army is quite at home in a Third World prison.' As with the incarceration of Terry Waite and his fellow British hostages in Lebanon over the same period, Cooper's plight became a cause célèbre, with frequent rumblings in the press about the outrageous detention of a British citizen in Iran on apparently non-existent evidence. It was Cooper's misfortune, however, that Mrs Thatcher's government had little room for manoeuvre in lobbying for his release. British-Iranian diplomatic relations had been at a low ebb following the Revolution of 1979 and then, just as they were improving, were further marred by the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Cooper had lived in Iran on and off for 20 years until the Revolution. He was working as sales and marketing manager of McDermott International, a US marine construction company, when he flew to Tehran in 1985 hoping to secure a contract for an oil pipeline. On December 7 he had just left his hotel in a taxi when it was cut up by a BMW Coupé: two men emerged and forced him to get in. 'What happened next seemed a blend of the Keystone Cops and the Theatre of the Absurd,' Cooper recalled. One of the men started berating the other for forgetting to bring a blindfold, until Cooper obligingly suggested that they could procure a bandage from a pharmacy and directed the men, unfamiliar with the local area, to the nearest one. Once blindfolded, he was transported to a prison and interrogated by a man who 'wore a close-fitting white mask over his face, with slits for the eyes… It is an image that has stayed with me ever since, regularly haunting my dreams and occurring in flashbacks during waking hours.' The man told Cooper: 'We know all about your espionage career in Iran, both before and after the Revolution. We know the outline, but there are some details which are very important to us… If you do not co-operate, you will stay here until you do, or until you die.' Cooper protested his innocence over the course of several weeks of interrogation, his captor insisting on remaining anonymous: 'If you ever see my face, even by accident, or even try to see it, I will push this pen in one of your ears and out of the other,' he declared on one occasion, waggling his ballpoint in Cooper's ear to underline his point. Cooper was blindfolded whenever he left his cell, even to walk a few yards to the toilet, which he was permitted to use only three times a day ('unless it's an emergency,' he was told, 'and we don't like emergencies'). In February 1987 Cooper was transferred to the notorious political prison in Evin, 10 miles from Tehran. 'Shouting and cries of pain are often heard,' Cooper recalled, 'only partly drowned out by religious chants and prayer ceremonies played endlessly on a tape recorder in the corridor.' He was ordered to provide his captors with a detailed run-down on key figures in British intelligence; having no knowledge of the subject, he invented a cast of personnel based on characters in the works of Evelyn Waugh, including a Secret Service legend called Colonel Dick Hooker, inspired by Waugh's Brigadier Ritchie-Hook. He amused himself in his cell by composing a poem: 'Brigadier Ritchie-Hook/ Is a character in a book./ My Colonel Dick Hooker/ Should have won me the Booker.' Cooper was told that he would be released if he agreed to share his insights in a television broadcast: 'This is going to be the most interesting programme on television for a long time,' his interrogator told him after the recording. 'You were very good.' The deal was abandoned, however, after his captors came across a report on the broadcast in The Guardian, pointing out that Cooper had been blatantly spoofing. In October 1987 Cooper was taken to the prison courtroom and tried. The judge, who spent most of the trial reading the newspaper, told him: 'As regards the verdict, that is obvious from the start, but it has to be typed out and that can take time.' Cooper was not informed of the outcome of the trial, but his father wrote to him to say that he had read in The Daily Telegraph that he was to be sentenced to death. Having formed a friendship with the prison governor, Cooper eventually prevailed on him to provide details and was told that he had received two sentences: death and 10 years' imprisonment. 'I asked him, 'Which comes first?' He looked puzzled for a moment, then said, 'Ah, I see, yes, a good question. I will recommend that they keep you here for 10 years and then hang you.' I replied: 'Please don't make it the other way round.'' Nevertheless, Cooper was eventually released in April 1991, and in 1994 he published a memoir, Death and Ten Years. 'Like him, his book is eccentric and erudite and very funny,' noted the BBC's John Simpson, an old friend of Cooper's, in the Telegraph. 'But its chief value is as a manual to show how a terrifying experience can be overcome triumphantly… Roger Cooper was not a man whom threats or violence could break. His interrogators had all the power, and he had all the character. Character won.' John Roger Sutherland Cooper was born in London on January 29 1935, the son of James Cooper and his wife Rosaleen, née Graves, who were both doctors. Rosaleen was the sister of the poet and novelist Robert Graves; as Roger recalled, 'Uncle Robert had a good baritone voice, at its best, I thought, singing slightly bawdy songs… to the embarrassment of my rather old-fashioned mother.' Robert Graves would die, by macabre coincidence, on the day his nephew was arrested in Iran in 1985. Roger grew up in Devon and won scholarships to Clifton College and to St John's College, Oxford, where he read modern languages. In 1956 he travelled to Budapest to observe the Hungarian Revolution, and returned with three fellow undergraduates the following year to deliver supplies of penicillin. He experienced his first taste of a foreign prison when they were arrested on espionage charges and held for two weeks. On their release they were interviewed for the BBC by Woodrow Wyatt, who rebuked them for having been 'larking about', and Roger was subsequently sent down from Oxford. He secured a BA in English, French and classical Persian literature as an external student of London University. His gift for languages saw him assigned to the Russian interpreter's course during his National Service with the Army. After training as a journalist at the Toronto bureau of United Press, in 1958 he decided to pursue a long-held fascination with Persian culture and travelled to Iran. He lived there on and off for two decades while working variously as a journalist, teacher and interpreter. In 1960 he married an Iranian woman, Guity Habibian, and converted to Islam; they had a daughter, but were divorced in 1965. Some of Cooper's articles for The New Statesman on human rights abuses earned him unwelcome attention from Savak, the secret police, but the Shah admired his eloquence sufficiently to hire him as a speechwriter. Cooper secured the final press interview with the Shah before the Revolution forced his exile in 1979. Cooper decided that he too was better off out of Iran after the Revolution, but made frequent return visits in the 1980s in his new role as a consultant, using his knowledge of the Middle East to aid international firms keen to do business in the region. Following his arrest in 1985, he found his time in solitary confinement in his two-by-three-metre cell rather restful, and was annoyed when the British government successfully lobbied for him to be spared this psychological ordeal and housed with the other prisoners. He became proficient at Persian crosswords: 'the guards would always call, 'Cooper, what's 10 across?'' On more than one occasion a guard summarily told him that it was time for his death sentence to be enacted, released the safety catch on his revolver and pulled the trigger – with the gun being empty. But Cooper refused to be cowed by such sadistic pranks and enjoyed teasing the guards. His calculator was taken away and examined after one of the guards suggested that it might contain a secret radio transmitter; after it was returned, Cooper would periodically shout into it: 'Hello! Hello! Mrs Thatcher? Hello? I have a message. Jaffar is on duty in prison today.' After nearly five and a half years, Cooper's incarceration came to an abrupt end: on April 2 1991 he was driven to the airport and told his sentence had been suspended. David Reddaway, the British chargé d'affaires in Tehran, who had worked tirelessly to secure his release, met him there and lent him a tie to face the press; they then flew together to Heathrow. There was some suggestion that Cooper was freed in exchange for the release of Mehrdad Kowkabi, an Iranian student on remand after being accused of setting fire to a London bookshop selling Rushdie's The Satanic Verses. Cooper himself thought he had benefited from the advent in Iran of the comparatively liberal President Rafsanjani: 'The Iran which has set me free is not the same as the Iran that arrested me. Today's Iran is far more humanitarian.' Living in Britain once more, Cooper resumed work as a journalist, writing a regular 'Rip Van Winkle' column for the Telegraph in which he mused on changes in British life that had occurred in his long absence. He was also in demand as a forthright reviewer of memoirs by other prisoners and hostages. Criticising Terry Waite's Taken on Trust as being 'almost totally deficient' in humour, he observed that Waite 'might have survived his ordeal better if he had found something to laugh at – if only at himself'. Cooper always denied that he had been involved in espionage in Iran, and claimed he had just been unlucky. 'I think, perhaps unfortunately, I matched the profile of an English spy… I had no particular job, and I'd lived there for many years.' Despite his insouciant attitude and lack of bitterness to the Iranians, Cooper deeply regretted that his mother and one of his brothers had died during his captivity without knowing that he would one day be released; he also suffered from PTSD. In his later years he ran a property and holiday business in Spain. Roger Cooper's second marriage, to Cherlee Botkin, an American, was also dissolved. He is survived by his daughter, Gisu, who came to live in Britain with her father and became a GP. Roger Cooper, born January 29 1935, died May 18 2025 Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Irish Independent
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Watchdog identifies failings by police in Kingsmill Massacre probe
Ten protestant men were shot dead outside the village of Kingsmill in Co Armagh in January 1976, when republican gunmen posing as British soldiers ordered them off a minibus on their way home from work. The killers asked the occupants of the bus their religion before opening fire. No-one has ever been convicted of the murders The only catholic on board was ordered to run away before the sectarian shooting started. Of the 11 protestants who remained on the roadside, one man, Alan Black, survived despite being shot 18 times. No-one has ever been convicted of the murders. Mr Black, now in his early 80s, attended the offices of Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland Marie Anderson in Belfast yesterday to receive her long-awaited report into one of the most notorious atrocities of the Troubles. He was accompanied by relatives of John McConville, one of the 10 men who died. Ms Anderson examined the original Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) investigation into the crime following complaints by bereaved relatives and Mr Black. She concluded that their complaints were in large part 'legitimate and justified'. The ombudsman recognised the 'intense pressure and strain' facing RUC officers in 1976. Notwithstanding that context, she identified a series of failings in the investigation, including a failure to arrest and interview suspects and a failure to exploit ballistic links with other attacks in which the same weapons were used. She said there were also missed investigative opportunities and inadequacies in areas such as forensics, fingerprints and palm prints, and witness inquiries. Ms Anderson added: 'By today's standards, the investigative resources available were wholly insufficient to deal with an inquiry the size of the Kingsmill investigation. 'The situation was exacerbated by a backdrop of multiple terrorist attacks in the south Armagh and south Down areas that stretched the already limited investigative resources available even further. 'The detective leading the investigation had a team of eight to assist him in investigating 10 murders and an attempted murder, which was supplemented for only a matter of weeks by two teams of about eight to 10 detectives from the RUC's regional crime squad. This was entirely inadequate.' I've got nothing but respect for them Mr Black said he felt 'vindicated' by the ombudsman's report. 'Back in the day, in the '70s, a policeman would put on his uniform in the morning not knowing if he's going to come home that night. 'So I've got nothing but respect for them,' Mr Black told reporters. 'But this investigation, it points to something like the Keystone Cops and that's all to do with the police handing their notes to their superiors, who hands them on, who hands them on, who then says 'No, we can't go down that road'. "We feel totally vindicated in making the complaint and we feel backed up by the ombudsman this far.' Mr Black said the 'death cries of his friends' remained his motivation in continuing to press for justice and truth.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Review: Silliness and slapstick make 39 Steps at Octagon a fun night out
If you go along expecting a tense thriller along the lines of the classic Hitchcock movie you're going to be sorely disappointed and more than a little confused. For this adaptation of John Buchan's novel by Patrick Barlow is an unashamedly silly romp full of cracking visual gags and a cast of four who work their socks off. For anyone with a knowledge of the original, the story is pretty much the same. The suave Richard Hannay shelters a mystery woman who is murdered at his flat but not before putting him on the trail of a gang of spies out to steal vital British secrets. The cast of The 39 Steps (Picture: Alastair Muir)From there on it's a helter-skelter chase which is part slapstick and part farce as our hero, wanted for a murder he didn't commit, tries to expose the fiendish plot. It does take a little while to get going and in the second half the pace dropped slightly for a time but when the cast were firing on all cylinders it was a joy to behold. Mateo Oxley was suitably dashing as Richard Hannay and had a good line in knowing looks to the audience when the absurdity kicked in. Mei Mei MacLeod, playing a spy, a crofter's wife and Hannay's ultimate love interest Pamela, was pulled off all three roles with aplomb. But it was the the comedy pairing of Danielle Bird and Phil Yarrow who were the real stars of the show. Playing everything from hapless policemen - more Keystone Cops than Scotland Yard - to eccentric hoteliers who wouldn't have been out of place in The League of Gentlemen, they stole every scene. Phil Yarrow and Danielle Bird in The 39 Steps (Picture: Alastair Muir)Operating at a frenetic pace their comic timing was superb and really the key to the play's success. There were some wonderfully observed comedy moments reminiscent of the silent films and an aerial scene that was pure Wallace and Gromit. A word too for the impressive staging. Embrace the silliness, admire the comic timing and you're going to have a fun night out. Until Saturday, May 10. Details from
Asharq Al-Awsat
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Is a ‘Trump in Tehran' Operetta Possible?
"Trump in Tehran!" This is the name of an operetta imagined by some American advocates of Realpolitik calling themselves Council on Foreign Relations rather than the sobriquet that G.K. Chesterton would have suggested: The Club of Queer Trades. The 'Real' part of the English-German cliché is misleading; what is offered has nothing to do with reality but a fantasized perception of it. The Realpolitik crowd looks at a country, decides who is Big Cheese at any given time, and tries to make a deal with him regardless of ethical, idealistic and even geostrategic considerations. One prominent advocate of the approach was Hans Morgenthau, a German-American academic. Like his fellow German Karl Marx who looked for 'laws of history' Morgenthau tried to find 'the laws of politics' as applied to international relations.' In his Weltanschauung, the concept of power was the overriding goal in international relations as it defined national interests. Morgenthau's analysis had found echoes in President Franklin Roosevelt's administration even in the final phases of the Second World War. It was in that spirit that Roosevelt through what was to be marketed as Track-II diplomacy, tried to find alternatives to Adolf Hitler inside Nazi Germany. Later, Realpolitik inspired both George Kennan and Henry Kissinger. Kissinger's détente roadshow with the Soviet Empire and the People's Republic of China became textbook examples of successful Realpolitik. The same method was also used to 'solve' the so-called Palestinian Problem, to rein-in the Kim gang in Pyongyang and persuade the mullahs of Tehran to enter the tent, at President Barack Obama's invitation and do their pissing from inside. In all those cases, the Realpolitik tribe high-fived its success but helped prolong the life of regimes doomed to crumble under the weight of their ignorance, error and crimes. For peddlers of Realpolitik, Kissinger's China experiment has become the referential point for successful diplomacy with the operetta 'Nixon in China' as its Broadway narrative. According to it, the US president forgot and forgave almost half a century of enmity and went to Beijing, had a few rounds of mao-tai with the 'Supreme Helmsman' and made the world a safer place for everyone including America. In the same vein, why shouldn't another US president go to Tehran to drink some fizzy water with the 'Supreme Guide' and close the 50-year-long history of hostage-taking, terrorism, vicious propaganda, sanctions and military confrontation? The question was first raised during Obama's tenure with hangers-on like John Kerry musing about an 'Obama in Tehran' operetta that would send 'Nixon in China' into oblivion. The Broadway rendition of 'Nixon in China' suffered from the speeding-up technique that made the Keystone Cops reels funnier. Seeing the operetta, one might think that Nixon flew to Beijing in a jiffy, waved a magic wand and, hey presto, Red China became as white as snow. That isn't what happened. The first contact between the Nixon Administration and Red China was established with the help of Iran and Pakistan early in 1970 and led to Kissinger's first visit to Beijing in was followed by Nixon's visit in 1972. Nixon sent one of his most senior diplomats, the future President George W H Bush, to Beijing as a semi-official envoy for a year of monitoring China's compliance with the deals made step by-step. It was only at the end of a seven-year long probation that the US extended full diplomatic recognition and normal relations to the People's Republic in 1979. In those years, China changed the way the US wanted it to change. To start with the fear of a hardline military clique emerging as Mao's successor was removed with the 'accidental' elimination only six months after Kissinger's secret visit to Beijing of Field Marshall Lin Biao, the standard-bearer of the anti-American faction in the Communist Party. Next, the Chinese leadership moved fast to conclude the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that regarded the 'American paper tiger' as the arch-enemy of global revolutionaries. The Gang of Four consisting of Mao's wife Jian Qing, Shanghai Mayor Yao Wenyuan and self-styled theoreticians Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen were booted out of key positions and, later, even put on trial for 'crimes against the revolution.' In 1971, covering a visit to China by Empress Farah and Premier Amir- Abbas Hoveyda of Iran, I had an opportunity to talk to Mrs. Mao in Beijing and Yao Wenyuan in Shanghai both of whom were still adamant that 'American Imperialism' would be defeated across the globe. During those seven eventful years, China steadily moved away from its status as a vehicle for global revolution to reshape itself as a normal state behaving as normal states, good or bad, do. The US wanted China to abandon its proxies in Angola, Mozambique, Southwest Africa and South Yemen, which the Beijing leadership did as quickly as it could. That helped Iran crush the guerrillas operating under the label 'People's Front for the Liberation of Occupied Arabian Gulf' (PFLOAG). With Hua Guofeng becoming Prime Minister and Deng Xiaoping emerging as 'strongman,' China adopted a clearly pro-US profile as both nations regarded the Soviet Union as a rival if not an actual threat. The Nixon-in-China episode was about hardnosed diplomacy which had little to do with Realpolitik. The Americans told the Chinese: If you want us to do something that you want, first deliver what we want. The Chinese complied and were rewarded. Applying the Chinese model to normalization with the mullahs will have to start with a long laundry list that Iran has to deal with in domestic and foreign policy fields. Is the 'Supreme Guide' Ali Khamenei ready for a seven-year ordeal in the hope of securing relief at the end? Does he have the clout that Mao had when he agreed to dramatically change course? Will he even last that long?
