Latest news with #EvinPrison
New York Times
3 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
What Iranians Lost When Israel Bombed Its Most Notorious Prison
The clock in Evin Prison stopped just before noon on June 23. That was the hour Israeli bombs tore through the compound, heavily damaging the health clinic, visitation center, administrative buildings and multiple wards — including the infamous Ward 209, where Evin's many political prisoners were held. The attack took place amid 12 days of Israeli airstrikes, an unlawful war targeting Iran's military and nuclear facilities. But Evin is no military site: It is known for holding the regime's dissenters and critics. Israeli authorities called the strike on Evin 'symbolic'— an attack on a prison that represented 'oppression for the Iranian people.' In a social media post, Israel's foreign minister Gideon Saar suggested it was a strike aimed at liberation. That symbolism did not ring true for the many Iranians killed in the blasts: visiting family members, social workers, medical staffers, teenage conscripts tasked with escorting prisoners and inmates, among them transgender prisoners whose ward was reduced to rubble. Anguished families were left scrambling for news of their loved ones. Prisoners who were already at risk were pushed into deeper peril — relocated to distant prisons, cut off from support and left to endure even harsher conditions under the unrelenting grip of a regime that punishes survival itself. If there's anything symbolic in Israel's bombing of Evin Prison, it is the false and dangerous narrative that wars help those fighting to bring democracy to Iran. Far from weakening the Islamic Republic's apparatus of repression, Israel's war has emboldened it, rolling back the fragile gains won through years of homegrown civil defiance. It has sabotaged decades of grass-roots organizing and collective labor by Iran's civil society, tearing through the very scaffolding of democratic resistance and undermining the only force capable of changing Iran from within: the Iranian people. I come from a long lineage of resistance to repression and tyranny. I was born in Evin Prison in 1983. My parents were secular leftist activists who fought to overthrow the Shah, and after the 1979 revolution continued their activism against the newly established Islamic Republic. In 1983, when my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father were arrested along with thousands of other political activists. After I was born, I stayed with her for a month before I was taken from her arms and given to my grandparents, who raised me while my parents remained behind bars. They were eventually released after serving yearslong sentences. My parents' arrest came during a wave of mass detentions and intimidation targeting the regime's political opponents. By 1983, as the Iran-Iraq war raged on, the regime used the conflict to justify a sweeping crackdown, framing dissent as treason in times of national crisis. My mother and father's imprisonment took place amid a ruthless campaign of repression that would culminate in 1988 in the bloodiest political purge in Iran's post-revolutionary history. Few things are more dangerous than a dictatorship in panic. The deeper the fear, the more ruthlessly it strikes back. That summer, weakened by eight years of war with Iraq and determined to consolidate power, the Iranian regime launched a campaign of executions against political prisoners it deemed unrepentant. Thousands were killed, their bodies dumped into unmarked mass graves. My uncle Mohsen was among them. The 1988 massacre remains seared into the collective memory of Iranians, an open wound in the nation's conscience. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
BBC News
7 days ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Evin prison: Iran's detainees in 'unbearable' conditions after Israeli strikes
One month on from deadly Israeli air strikes on a notorious Iranian prison during the war between the two countries, inmates say they are being kept under unbearable and inhumane conditions after being moved to other promises by the authorities, some of those transferred from Evin Prison in Tehran say they continue to face difficulties such as overcrowded cells, lack of beds and air conditioning, limited number of toilets and showers, and insect BBC has received accounts from the family members of prisoners moved from Evin, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity out of concern for the safety of themselves and the targeted Evin on 23 June. According to the Iranian authorities, the attack killed 80 people, including five prisoners, 41 prison staff and 13 military conscripts. The prison held thousands of men and women, including prominent political dissidents, human rights defenders, journalists and dual and foreign nationals, as well as members of religious and ethnic minorities. All inmates were subsequently moved out and sent to other prisons following the videos and satellite imagery confirm damage to several buildings within the complex, including the medical clinic, the visitor centre, the prosecutor's office and an administrative the attack, the Israeli military described the prison as "a symbol of oppression for the Iranian people". It said it carried out the strikes in a "precise manner to mitigate harm to civilians" imprisoned has labelled the attack a "war crime". Israel's military also said that Evin was used for "intelligence operations against Israel, including counter-espionage". It did not comment further when asked to provide evidence for the International said on Tuesday that, following an in-depth investigation, the attack constituted "a serious violation of international humanitarian law and must be criminally investigated as war crimes"."Under international humanitarian law, a prison or place of detention is presumed a civilian object and there is no credible evidence in this case that Evin prison constituted a lawful military objective," it added. Through his family members, one political prisoner who was sent to the Greater Tehran Central Penitentiary, also known as Fashafouyeh Prison, said that fellow inmates told him conditions there were inhumane even before Evin detainees were said that the prison was in such a remote and dangerous area outside the capital that his wife had not been able to visit him since he moved to Evin, which is in an accessible, residential area in north Tehran, Fashafouyeh is located 20 miles (32km) south of Tehran, in a desert with nothing around it but a road, according to the family prisoner told his family that many inmates were still sleeping on the floor at Fashafouyeh in overcrowded cells without air conditioning, although the authorities have said repeatedly that they will improve the situation.A video from inside the prison, which has been verified by the BBC, shows a cell crowded with prisoners lying on beds and on the floor. At one point, a group affiliated with the authorities came to the prison to film a video intended to show that prisoners were doing well, but other inmates began chanting "death to the dictator" - a popular protest slogan among Iranian opposition groups directed at the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei - and stopped them from filming, the family of the prisoner of inmates in Fashafouyeh said that political prisoners were now staying in the same cell as those accused or convicted of violent crimes. This is a tactic that rights groups say Iran uses to intimidate political prisoners and is against the United Nations' rules on the treatment of political detainee transferred to Fashafouyeh described his cell to his family as being unbearable due to lack of hygiene, with bedbugs and cockroaches all around, adding that the prison lacks basic amenities even compared to Evin. Human Rights Watch has previously accused the Iranian authorities of using threats of torture and indefinite imprisonment, along with lengthy interrogations and the denial of medical care for detainees. Iran has rejected these Evin has long drawn condemnation from human rights groups over alleged torture and threats, conditions at Fashafouyeh had been "underreported", prisoners told the Iranian journalist Mehdi Mahmoodian, who was also transferred from Evin to Fashafouyeh, said in a letter published on his Instagram page that due to the non-political nature of prisoners who were held there, they had been "long forgotten" and subjected to "years of humiliation, neglect, and oppression" because "they have no voice". Fariba Kamalabadi, a 62-year-old Baha'i detainee who was transferred from Evin to Qarchak Prison, south of the capital, has said that she "would rather have died in the attack than be transferred to such a prison".Iran's minority Baha'i community has long faced systematic discrimination and persecution, denied constitutional recognition and basic rights like education, public employment and religious freedom, because the Islamic Republic does not recognise it as a religion."Fariba has to live in Qarchak in an overcrowded cell, where it is so cramped that people have to take turns to eat food around the table, and then return to their beds afterwards because of the lack of space", said her daughter, Alhan Taefi, who lives in the UK. "Some of the roughly 60 prisoners who have been transferred from Evin with her are elderly women, and they do not receive proper medical care. There are flies everywhere in the cell. Her son-in-law and grandchildren, who are six and nine, were allowed to visit her in Evin but have not been granted permission to visit her yet, as they are not considered immediate family."The BBC has contacted the Iranian embassy in London for comment on the conditions of prisoners who have been transferred from Evin. Civilian deaths In the month since the strikes, the BBC has verified the deaths of seven civilians related to the attack on Evin, including a five-year-old boy, a doctor, and a members of Mehrangiz Imenpour, 61, a painter and mother of two who lived near the prison complex, told the BBC that she was "caught in the tragedy" of the attack. She left home to use a cash machine and happened to be walking on a street adjacent to the prison's visitor centre as Israel struck the complex, a family member said. She was killed by the impact of the children are devastated, a relative recounted to the BBC."When two states engage in a conflict, people are the ones who pay the price. Both states are guilty, both are responsible, and both must be held to account", the relative said. Additional reporting by Shayan Sardarizadeh, BBC Verify
New York Times
15-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Israel and Iran Usher In New Era of Psychological Warfare
In the hours before Israeli forces bombed Evin prison in Iran's capital on June 23, posts appeared on social media in Persian, foreshadowing the attack and urging Iranians to come free the prisoners. Moments after the bombs struck, a video appeared on X and Telegram, purporting to show a blast at an entrance to the prison, which is notorious for holding political prisoners. One post on X included a hashtag, in Persian: '#freeevin.' The attack on the prison was real, but the posts and video were not what they seemed. They were part of an Israeli ruse, according to researchers who tracked the effort. It was not the only trickery during the conflict. Over 12 days of attacks, Israel and Iran turned social media into a digital battlefield, using deception and falsehoods to try to sway the outcome even as they traded kinetic missile strikes that killed hundreds and roiled an already turbulent Middle East. The posts, researchers said, represented a greater intensity of information warfare, by beginning before the strikes, employing artificial intelligence and spreading widely so quickly. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Wall Street Journal
15-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Israel Struck a Notorious Iranian Prison. Its Inmates Are Paying a Price.
Authorities at Tehran's Evin Prison were still attending to the dead and wounded on the evening of June 23 when one of the highest-profile inmates held there, Swedish-Iranian scientist Ahmadreza Djalali, called his wife to tell her he was safe. Hours earlier, Israeli airstrikes hit the sprawling compound that holds thousands of detainees, many of them political prisoners. The destruction and damage was so extensive—far more than outside observers initially realized—that the prisoners were being transferred elsewhere, he told her in a brief phone call.
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Iran says 5 inmates at Evin prison were killed in Israel's airstrike on Tehran
TEHRAN (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on Iran's capital last month killed five inmates at Evin prison and resulted in the escape of several others, Iranian media reported Saturday. The semi-official ILNA news agency and other Iranian media quoted a spokesman for Iran's judiciary that the five inmates killed in the June 23 strike had been convicted on financial offences. The spokesman didn't name the victims or give any further details. The judiciary's own news website, Mizanonline quoted spokesman Asghar Jahangir as saying only that 'small number" of inmates were killed. He added that an 'insignificant number of inmates' had also escaped and that authorities would soon bring them back into custody. Jahangir said no one serving time at Evin prison for working with Israel's spy agency Mossad was injured in the attack. Iranian authorities last month put the death toll from the air strike at 71. But Iranian media later raised that number to 80 including staff, soldiers, inmates and visiting family members. It's unclear why Israel targeted the prison. The Israeli Defense Ministry had said on the day of the airstrikes that 50 aircraft dropped 100 munitions on military targets 'based on high-quality and accurate intelligence from the Intelligence Branch.' The New York-based Center for Human Rights had criticized Israel for striking the prison - seen as a symbol of repression of any opposition - saying it violated the principle of distinction between civilian and military targets. The 12-day air war left more than 1,060 dead in Iran and 28 dead in Israel.
