Israel bombs Iran's notorious Evin Prison, used to detain dissidents, foreigners
Iranian media claimed the strike was intended to breach the entrance to allow prisoners to escape. Israeli officials did not confirm or deny it, but Foreign Minister Gideon Saar posted footage of the bombing on X, captioning it with the phrase 'Long live freedom' in Spanish.We warned Iran time and again: stop targeting civilians!They continued, including this morning.Our response:Viva la libertad, carajo!@JMilei pic.twitter.com/pVdlWvCDqQ— Gideon Sa'ar | (@gidonsaar) June 23, 2025IRAN'S MOST FEARED DETENTION CENTRELocated in the foothills of northern Tehran, Evin Prison was constructed in 1971 and quickly earned notoriety during Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's iron-fisted rule. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the facility was repurposed to house the overthrown Shah's allies—and later, disillusioned revolutionaries themselves.Today, Evin is run by multiple security agencies including the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Ministry of Intelligence. The prison holds between 10,000 to 15,000 inmates, including political prisoners, protesters, journalists, and foreign nationals accused of national security crimes.advertisementThe facility is infamous for torture, arbitrary detention, and denial of due process. Amnesty International's 2020 report Trampling Humanity documented widespread abuse at Evin, including beatings, electric shocks, sexual assault, and sensory deprivation.Ward 209, controlled by intelligence operatives, is particularly feared for deploying 'white torture', a prolonged form of solitary confinement designed to psychologically break inmates, according to Human Rights Watch.HOSTAGE DIPLOMACYEvin has become a focal point of international human rights concerns, particularly due to its role in Iran's practice of detaining foreign nationals.In 2003, Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died at the prison 18 days after her arrest. She was 55. An autopsy found signs of torture and sexual assault.Iranian-American journalist Jason Rezaian, who used to be the Washington Post's Tehran bureau chief, spent 18 months inside Evin under espionage charges.In recent years, Western governments have accused Iran of using such detainees in 'hostage diplomacy,' exchanging prisoners for political or economic concessions.This was the case with British-Iranian Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She was sentenced to 5 years in prison on trumped-up national security charges, and freed in 2022 after the UK government conceded to settle a long-standing debt with Iran.HORRIFYING ABUSE OF WOMEN INMATESThe abuse inside Evin extends uniquely to women prisoners. In 2022, imprisoned Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi published a letter detailing sexual violence, harassment, and humiliation by male guards and interrogators.advertisementWomen who were detained on political charges for participating in anti-government demonstrations after the death of Mahsa Amini told the BBC how they were subjected to beatings, multiple daily interrogations lasting hours, solitary confinement and threats of torture of family members by Evin authorities.Advocates say medical neglect and denial of basic hygiene products further exacerbate conditions for women inside the prison.ISRAEL'S MESSAGEThe strike on Evin represents more than a military escalation. It signals Israel's targeting of the symbolic heart of Iran's domestic repression apparatus. Human rights organisations and governments worldwide have condemned conditions at Evin for decades.By striking its gates, Israel may be sending a message to both the Iranian regime and the international community that it views the prison not merely as infrastructure, but as a weapon of oppression.- EndTune InMust Watch
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Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Israelis Hold Nationwide Protests and Strike to End the Gaza War
TEL AVIV—The families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza led nationwide protests and a strike calling for their loved ones to be freed and for an end to the war in Gaza, a sign of growing domestic pressure to wrap up the fighting even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he plans to expand it. Protesters burned tires on the highway connecting Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Protesters blocked big highways across the country on Sunday morning—the start of the working week in Israel—as part of demonstrations that will take place in more than 300 different locations and are expected to draw hundreds of thousands of Israelis, according to organizers. Major Israeli universities and some businesses and tech companies said they would strike for the day in support of the families. The day of protests comes as Netanyahu announced earlier this month that Israel would take over Gaza City, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are believed to be sheltering and where some Israeli hostages are thought to be held. That decision has drawn broad international condemnation as well as domestic opposition, with polls showing that close to 80% of Israelis, including right-wingers, support ending the war in exchange for the remaining hostages held in Gaza. The pressure has so far failed to move Netanyahu. His critics say that he is prolonging the almost two-year-long war for his own political survival, an allegation he denies. 'The Prime Minister can bring one deal to return all the hostages and end the war, and he also has the backing of the people for that,' said Noam Peri, the daughter of deceased hostage Chaim Peri, during a press conference on Sunday morning. 'But he chooses to expand it, in a decision that is a death sentence for the hostages who are dying in the tunnels.' Netanyahu's government depends on the support of far-right lawmakers who oppose ending the war and call for re-establishing Jewish settlements in Gaza. Lawmakers from Netanyahu's coalition sharply criticized Sunday's demonstrations. 'The riots in support of Hamas have begun,' said Likud party lawmaker Hanoch Milwidsky in a post on X. The war in Gaza has killed over 61,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, which don't say how many were combatants, and has left swaths of the strip in ruins. The enclave faces a dire humanitarian crisis, including widespread hunger. In a sign of preparation for an invasion of Gaza City, the Israeli military unit charged with humanitarian coordination, called COGAT, said Saturday that it would begin to transfer tents and shelter equipment into Gaza. It said the equipment was required to evacuate the population south, a step Israel said it would take before the military operation began. Demonstrations are set to take place in more than 300 locations across Israel. Write to Anat Peled at Israelis Hold Nationwide Protests and Strike to End the Gaza War
The Wire
2 hours ago
- The Wire
‘Legitimisation Cell': The Israeli Military Unit Tasked With Linking Gaza Journalists to Hamas
The Israeli military has operated a special unit called the 'Legitimisation Cell', tasked with gathering intelligence from Gaza that can bolster Israel's image in the international media, according to three intelligence sources who spoke to 972 Magazine and Local Call and confirmed the unit's existence. Established after October 7, the unit sought information on Hamas's use of schools and hospitals for military purposes, and on failed rocket launches by armed Palestinian groups that harmed civilians in the enclave. It has also been assigned to identify Gaza-based journalists it could portray as undercover Hamas operatives, in an effort to blunt growing global outrage over Israel's killing of reporters — the latest of whom was Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif, killed in an Israeli airstrike this past week. According to the sources, the Legitimisation Cell's motivation was not security, but public relations. Driven by anger that Gaza-based reporters were 'smearing [Israel's] name in front of the world', its members were eager to find a journalist they could link to Hamas and mark as a target, one source said. The source described a recurring pattern in the unit's work: whenever criticism of Israel in the media intensified on a particular issue, the Legitimisation Cell was told to find intelligence that could be declassified and employed publicly to counter the narrative. 'If the global media is talking about Israel killing innocent journalists, then immediately there's a push to find one journalist who might not be so innocent — as if that somehow makes killing the other 20 acceptable,' the intelligence source said. Often, it was Israel's political echelon that dictated to the army which intelligence areas the unit should focus on, another source added. Information gathered by the Legitimisation Cell was also passed regularly to the Americans through direct channels. Intelligence officers said they were told their work was vital to allowing Israel to prolong the war. 'The team regularly collected intelligence that could be used for hasbara – say, a stockpile of [Hamas] weapons [found] in a school – anything that could bolster Israel's international legitimacy to keep fighting,' another source explained. 'The idea was to [allow the military to] operate without pressure, so countries like America wouldn't stop supplying weapons.' An Israeli Government Press Office (GPO) tour shows weapons and ammunition from the field used by Hamas on October 7, at the Julis Military Base on November 10, 2023. Photo: Mishel Amzaleg/GPO via 972 Magazine. The unit also sought evidence linking Gaza's police to the October 7 attack, in order to justify targeting them and dismantling Hamas's civilian security force, one source familiar with the Legitimisation Cell's work said. Two of the intelligence sources recounted that, in at least one case since the war began, the Legitimisation Cell misrepresented intelligence in a way that allowed for the false portrayal of a journalist as a member of Hamas's military wing. 'They were eager to label him as a target, as a terrorist – to say it's okay to attack him,' one source recalled. 'They said: during the day he's a journalist, at night he's a platoon commander. Everyone was excited. But there was a chain of errors and corner-cutting. 'In the end, they realised he really was a journalist,' the source continued, and the journalist wasn't targeted. A similar pattern of manipulation is evident in the intelligence presented on Al-Sharif. According to the documents released by the army, which have not been independently verified, he was recruited to Hamas in 2013 and remained active until he was injured in 2017 – meaning that, even if the documents were accurate, they suggest he played no role in the current war. The same applies to the case of journalist Ismail Al-Ghoul, who was killed in a July 2024 Israeli airstrike along with his cameraman in Gaza City. A month later, the army claimed he was a 'military wing operative and Nukhba terrorist,' citing a 2021 document allegedly retrieved from a 'Hamas computer'. Yet that document stated he received his military rank in 2007 – when he was just ten years old, and seven years before he was supposedly recruited to Hamas. 'Find as much material as possible for hasbara ' One of the Legitimisation Cell's first high-profile efforts came on October 17, 2023, after the deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City. While international media, citing Gaza's Ministry of Health, reported that an Israeli strike had killed 500 Palestinians, Israeli officials said the blast was caused by a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket and that the death toll was far lower. The day after the explosion, the army released a recording that the Legitimisation Cell had located in intelligence intercepts, presented as a phone call between two Hamas operatives blaming the incident on a Islamic Jihad misfire. Many global outlets subsequently considered the claim likely, including some who conducted their own investigations, and the release dealt a severe blow to the credibility of Gaza's Health Ministry – hailed within the Israeli army as a victory for the cell. A Palestinian human rights activist told 972 and Local Call in December 2023 that he was stunned to hear his own voice in the recording, which he said was simply a benign conversation with another Palestinian friend. He insisted he had never been a Hamas member. A source who worked with the Legitimisation Cell said that publishing classified material like a phone call was deeply controversial. 'It's very much not in Unit 8200's DNA to expose our capabilities for something as vague as public opinion,' he explained. Still, the three intelligence sources said the army treated the media as an extension of the battlefield, allowing it to declassify sensitive intelligence for public release. Even intelligence personnel outside the Legitimisation Cell were told to flag any material that might aid Israel in the information war. 'There was this phrase, 'That's good for legitimacy,'' one source recalled. 'The goal was simply to find as much material as possible to serve hasbara efforts.' After the publication of this article, official security sources confirmed to 972 and Local Call that various 'research teams' had been established inside Israeli military intelligence over the past two years with the aim of 'exposing Hamas's lies'. They said that the goal was to 'discredit' journalists reporting on the war on broadcast networks 'in allegedly a reliable and precise way', but who they claimed are actually part of Hamas. According to the sources, these research teams do not play a role in the selection of individual targets to be attacked. 'I never once hesitated to convey the truth' On August 10, the Israeli army killed six journalists in a strike it openly admitted was aimed at Al Jazeera reporter Al-Sharif. Two months earlier, in July, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had warned it feared for Al-Sharif's life, saying he was 'targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign, which he believes is a precursor to his assassination'. After Al-Sharif posted a viral video in July of himself in tears while covering Gaza's hunger crisis, the Israeli army's Arabic-language spokesperson, Avichay Adraee, published three different videos attacking him, accusing him of 'propaganda' and of participating in 'Hamas's false starvation campaign'. Al-Sharif identified a link between Israel's media war and the military one. 'Adraee's campaign is not only a media threat or an image destruction; it is a real-life threat,' he told CPJ. Less than a month later, he was killed, with the army presenting what they said was declassified intelligence of his membership in Hamas to justify the strike. Israeli soldiers work on their tanks in a staging area on the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on August 13, 2025. Photo: AP/PTI. The military had already claimed in October 2024 that six Al Jazeera journalists, including Al-Sharif, were military operatives, an accusation he vehemently denied. He became the second from that list to be targeted, after reporter Hossam Shabat. Since the October accusation, his whereabouts were well known, leading many observers to question whether killing Al-Sharif – who regularly reported from Gaza City – was part of Israel's plan to enforce a media blackout ahead of its military preparations to capture the city. In response to questions from 972 Magazine about Al-Sharif's killing, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) spokesperson reiterated that 'the IDF attacked a terrorist from the Hamas terrorist organisation who was operating under the guise of a journalist from the Al Jazeera network in the northern Gaza Strip,' and claimed that the army 'does not intentionally harm uninvolved individuals and journalists in particular, all in accordance with international law.' Prior to the strike, the spokesperson added, 'steps were taken to reduce the chance of harming civilians, including the use of precision weapons, aerial observations and additional intelligence information.' At just 28, Al-Sharif had become one of Gaza's most recognised journalists. He is among 186 reporters and media workers killed in the Strip since October 7, according to CPJ – the deadliest period for journalists since the group began collecting data in 1992. Other organisations have put the death toll as high as 270. 'If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,' Al-Sharif wrote in his final message, posthumously published on his social media accounts. 'I have lived through pain in all its details, tasted suffering and loss many times, yet I never once hesitated to convey the truth as it is, without distortion or falsification.' Yuval Abraham is a journalist and filmmaker based in Jerusalem. A version of this article, republished here with permission from 972 Magazine, was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here. 972 Magazine is an independent, online, nonprofit magazine run by a group of Palestinian and Israeli journalists.
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Time of India
Missile Attack On Israel After IDF Bombs Yemeni Capital; Sirens Blare In Tel Aviv
A ballistic missile launched by the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen at Israel a short while ago was intercepted by air defenses, Israeli military said. There are no immediate reports of impacts or injuries. Sirens had sounded in central Israel and the Jerusalem area. This after Israeli Navy bombarded Yemen's capital Sanaa. Since March 18, when the IDF resumed its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis in Yemen have launched 70 ballistic missiles and at least 22 drones at Israel. Several of the missiles have fallen short. Read More
