Roger Cooper was arrested at gunpoint for alleged espionage while on a business trip to Tehran in 1985. So began an extraordinary mental and physical struggle with his Iranian captors that was to last five years, three months and 25 days. Long after his parody of a trial by Revolutionary Court in Evin gaol, Cooper learnt of his sentence: "Death plus ten years". Asking, "Which comes first?", he was told he would be held for ten years and then hanged. He replied: "Please don't make it the other way round". For 25 years Cooper had worked in Iran as a journalist, teacher, Persian translator, business consultant and Middle Eastern expert. Now he found himself beaten and blindfolded and threatened with indefinite gaol unless he "confessed". This is his story.