Shah of Iran's enforcer? Man living quietly in US faces trial five decades on

Neighbors in the affluent Florida community of Windermere know them as Peter and Nancy, the retired couple they wave to on morning walks, and who always appear to enjoy visits from their two high-flying daughters, one a respected professor of science at Harvard.

- Richard Luscombe

Yet behind the high walls of their $3.6m (£2.5m) lakefront mansion lies a darker, more closely guarded reality: "Peter" is actually Parviz Sabeti, the alleged head of secret police and chief torturer of the former Shah of Iran's prerevolutionary government, now facing a $225m lawsuit in Florida for atrocities committed in prisons in Tehran and elsewhere.

A district court judge ruled last month that Sabeti, 89, who has crafted a successful and anonymous new life for himself and his family since fleeing his homeland in 1978, must face trial in the case brought by three plaintiffs who describe themselves as former political prisoners.

In court filings, the plaintiffs say they were among thousands of people rounded up as perceived opponents of the shah by Savak, Iran's notoriously brutal internal security and intelligence agency, and subjected to abuses at Sabeti's personal direction - including rape, electric shocks, near-drownings and forced nail extraction.

One particularly barbaric piece of equipment, they allege, was Apollo, an electric chair named after the early US space programme, which featured a metal helmet that amplified victims' screams into their own ears.