He has been living in Greece for the past 15 years, doing business in 45 countries around the world and watching in horror what is happening in the country he fled as a teenager to save. Ario Kavoussi, an Iranian who lives permanently in Athens and owns the startup The List, talks to protothema.gr about a regime that he says is unprecedented in its cruelty, cynicism and contempt for human life.

He fled Iran at the age of 16, when his parents decided to send him and his brother abroad to study to avoid the conscription that starts at 18. A year later, at 17, he explains, the Iranian authorities systematically blocked young people from going abroad, in a standard state policy, so that they could not leave before fulfilling their military obligations. A practice that, as it turned out in his case, defined his entire life.

Despite living permanently in Greece, he visited Iran three more times in the following years. Each return, however, was also an unpleasant experience. “Each time I went, the situation was worse, he says. The biggest problems she faced were at the airport.“They held my passport, they put a red stamp that I cannot travel, even though I had all the papers for my studies. It was clear that they wanted to intimidate you.”

Today, much of his family remains in Iran. For the past week or so, however, communications have been effectively cut off. Not only with foreign countries, but also within the country. “Communications have been cut off inside Iran as well, so they can’t communicate and coordinate. One city does not know what is happening in the other. They don’t know if the Americans are helping or not. It’s a complete blackout.”

Ario believes that Europe and the United States are only now beginning to understand the true extent of the tragedy. “Now Europe and America understand what is happening. Now we are learning about 12,000 dead. What people don’t know is that over the years millions of people have been lost.”

He makes particular reference to the so-called “toll of the dead”, a practice he stresses has been in place for years. “The 7,000 euros demanded to return the bodies is nothing new. When they were killing and raping demonstrators in the street, they were asking the families for between 5,000 and 7,000 euros to give back the corpse”. The reasoning, as he describes it, borders on the absurd. “They said that this is the money that they spent on bullets to kill the protesters. Unbelievable and yet true.”

He clarifies that those who commit these acts do not represent the Iranian people.“Those who kill are not Persians. They are Khomeini’s mullahs.” And he concludes with a sentence that sums up what he describes: “What has been done in Iran has not been done anywhere in the world. Such a cruel dictatorship has never been established before.”