Ceilings, walls and wooden cabinets collapsed into heaps of jagged debris in the prison’s visitor center. Scorched papers and brightly colored case files lay scattered amid broken bricks and tangled wires in the administration building. Shattered glass covered patient beds and equipment in the infirmary.
Evin prison in Tehran stands out in Iran as a singular symbol of oppression, its notorious reputation reaching far beyond the country’s borders. For five decades, Iran’s rulers, from the shah to the clerics, have used Evin as the place to punish dissent with detention, interrogation, torture and execution.
When Israel struck the prison with missiles on June 23, the attack generated widespread condemnation and fury in Iran, even among opponents of the authoritarian government.
The strikes were the deadliest of the 12-day Israel-Iran war. Iran has said 79 people were killed and dozens injured in the Evin attack, but casualty numbers are expected to rise.
Among the dead and wounded were visiting family members of prisoners, social workers, a lawyer, physicians and nurses, a 5-year-old child, teenage soldiers guarding the doors as part of mandatory military service, administrative staff and residents of the area, according to Iranian media reports, activists and rights groups.
About 100 transgender inmates are missing after their section of the prison was flattened, and the authorities say they are presumed dead, said Reza Shafakhah, a prominent human rights lawyer, who added that the government often treats being transgender as a crime. The chief prosecutor of the prison, Ali Ghanaatkar, despised by government critics for his handling of political prisoners, and one of his deputies also were killed.
The Israeli military declined to comment about the purpose of the attack on Evin or the casualties. Israeli officials have described the attack on Evin as “symbolic.” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, in a social media post, suggested that it was both retaliation for Iranian missile strikes on civilian structures, and somehow an act of liberation.
But in Iran, prisoners, families, activists and lawyers said that Israel’s action had shown total disregard for the lives and safety of the prisoners. They said the timing of the attack, at noon during a working day, also meant that the prison had been full of visitors, lawyers, medical and administrative staff.
Narges Mohammadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who is Iran’s most prominent human rights activist, said in a statement that Israel’s attack “carried out in broad daylight, in front of families and visitors, is clearly a war crime.” Ms. Mohammadi has spent decades in and out of Evin, and is currently out on furlough.
Siamak Namazi, a 53-year-old Iranian American businessman who was detained in Evin for eight years on espionage charges that the United States and rights groups described as bogus, said that prisoners, like many ordinary Iranians, feel trampled by two ruthless powers.
“What I hear from prisoners and my friends there is that they feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures them and a foreign force dropping bombs on their heads in the name of freedom,” he said.
Amnesty International has called on Iran to immediately release political prisoners, and said in its Persian social media account that Israel’s attack on Evin could constitute a war crime. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan called the attack a “a grave breach of international humanitarian law.”
This account of what transpired at Evin during and just after Israel’s attack is based on interviews with more than a dozen families of prisoners, lawyers representing them, former prisoners in contact with current ones, written testimonies from current prisoners, photos and videos by independent journalists and Iranian media reports.
The Attack
At around noon on a sweltering summer day, Leila Jaffarzadeh, 35, the mother of a year-old baby girl, arrived at Evin clutching a bag of documents. The authorities had agreed to furlough her husband, Milad Khedmati, jailed on financial charges.
Ms. Jaffarzadeh was on the phone with her husband as she approached the visitor center when the first explosions rocked the prison. She screamed, telling him, “they are bombing, bomb, bomb, bomb,” then the line went dead. Shrapnel had pierced her brain, killing her, said her brother-in-law, Hossein Khedmati, a writer and poet, in an interview from Tehran.
Reaching the scene within an hour, Hossein Khedmati said, he saw smoke, flames and carnage in every direction — broken and dead bodies, shredded clothes and loose shoes scattered in the debris. Emergency responders carried the injured on stretchers to ambulances.
He found his sister-in-law in a body bag. “I can’t fathom that Leila is no longer with us and Nila will grow up without her mother,” he said. “Telling my brother his wife was dead was the hardest thing I have done in my life.”
Zahra Ebadi, a social worker at the prison, could not find child care on thatday, so she took her 5-year-old son, Mehrad, to work. He was playing in the visitor area while his mother finished some paperwork in an office, according to her cousin, Tahereh Pajouhesh, who was interviewed by the Shargh Daily newspaper.
After the first blast, Ms. Ebadi ran to find her son, but another explosion killed her, Ms. Pajouhesh said. A male colleague had grabbed Mehrad to shield him, but debris crushed and killed both of them. Four other female social workers also were killed, according to Iranian media reports.
Mina, 53, said she had been talking by phone with her son who is serving a five-year sentence in Evin for political activism. The call cut off abruptly. She redialed, again and again. When he finally answered he told her the prison had been attacked, she said, and she headed for the prison. Mina asked that her last name and the name of her son not be published out of fear of retribution.
“My legs went numb and my body started shaking. I don’t know how I got myself to Evin despite all the obstacles,” Mina said in a telephone interview. “Security guards wouldn’t let me get through. Other family members were there too. I eventually got myself to the strike site by yelling and screaming.” She said she counted at least 15 dead bodies on the ground.
Iranian news media reported that at least two locations in the prison had been hit directly, the three-story visitor center near the main entrance, which also housed the prosecutor’s office, and the 47-bed hospital clinic inside the compound. Forensic Architecture, a research agency that specializes in visual investigations, said on Friday that its analysis of satellite images showed at least six strikes on Evin, four confirmed by photos taken at the scene, including hits on several of the prison’s dormitories. The library, the grocery shop, the warehouse storing food and the infamous 209 ward controlled by intelligence forces were also destroyed.
Iran’s police force said it had detonated two unexploded missiles in the area of Evin, according to Iranian media reports.
The blasts also extensively damaged surrounding residential and commercial buildings and vehicles, photographs and videos showed.
A photographer who visited the prison on the Sunday after the June 23 attack described a pungent smell from burned and decaying flesh in the rubble. Iranian media reported that the morgue was using DNA tests to identify body parts and corpses burned beyond recognition.
“The prisoners lived in constant fear, believing each moment could be their last,” said Nasrine Setoudeh, a prominent lawyer and former Evin prisoner whose husband and fellow political activist, Reza Khandan, was detained there. “It took an hour for Reza to call and confirm he was safe. That hour felt like an eternity.”
The Aftermath
The families of four political prisoners have released the inmates’ detailed accounts of the strikes and their aftermath, either in statements shared with The New York Times or on social media. They are Abolfazl Ghadyani and Mehdi Mahmoudian, two prominent political dissidents; Mostafa Tajzadeh, a former minister of the interior who is a vocal critic of the government, and Mr. Khandan, Ms. Setoudeh’s husband.
In addition, 13 other prisoners made a joint statement, others have released more general accounts and four female prisoners told BBC Persian of events inside the women’s section.
They all described sudden, all-encompassing chaos: Buildings rocked walls crumbled, windows shattered, doors blew off hinges, smoke and dust clouded the air, and people lay bloodied — shouting for help if they were conscious.
A group of male prisoners ran into the courtyard and found the clinic in flames. The warehouse storing food and personal hygiene supplies was ravaged. Prisoners from the solitary confinement building and their guards wandered outside through blown out doors, dazed.
The four women told the BBC that for more than three hours no outside help arrived and phone lines were cut. They tended to the wounded and cleaned up shards of glass and other debris.
Mr. Tajzadeh told his wife, Fakhri Mohtashamipour, that he had been pacing the hallway on his daily exercise when the first bombs detonated, and would have died if he had been inside his cell, which was flattened. She said in an interview that he managed a quick phone call to her that evening saying the prison had lost power, water and gas, and prisoners were forced to huddle in the dark, in a half-collapsed building.
In the first few hours prisoners helped with recovery efforts. They recounted evacuating survivors from the clinic and digging through rubble with their hands, uncovering about 20 bodies. According to a statement by Mr. Mahmoudian and Mr. Ghadyani, among those severely injured was a female physician, whom they identified only as Dr. Makarem, an infectious disease specialist who lost an arm and leg and who had volunteered at the prison clinic once a week.
In the afternoon, they said, security forces had swarmed the prison, and at gunpoint forced the men helping with rescue operations to go back inside.
Late that night, male prisoners were shackled in pairs at the wrists and ankles, and marched out, again at gunpoint. Those who wrote detailed accounts said each was allowed a plastic bag with whatever remained of their belongings.
They clambered in the dark through the ruins of the prison, over tangled wires, broken bricks and dead bodies. Some people collapsed. Some cried. It took more than an hour to reach the evacuation buses awaiting them through a back opening because the front gate was impassable, a distance that would normally take five minutes.
“We marched in the tunnel of horror, our feet chained, our hands clutching plastic bags with some of our belongings, forming a lone line through the rubble,” said Mr. Ghadyani and Mr. Mahmoudian in their joint statement. “Here, caught between two threats, we are victims and hostages.”
Mr. Khandan, a human-rights activist and graphic designer by trade, said the chains cut into his flesh with every step and he fell several times. He also abandoned the plastic bag containing his belongings, finding it impossible to carry it with chained hands.
As the prisoners reached the buses around 3 a.m., he said, a new round of Israeli attacks erupted, along with the firing of Iranian air defenses. “Fear overcame us. It was impossible to move fast and take shelter because our hands and legs were tied to one another,” Mr. Khandan said.
The convoy of buses, escorted by security vehicles, eventually departed, snaking its way amid airstrikes to Fashafouyeh prison, a facility on the outskirts of Tehran, known for unsanitary, overcrowded conditions. Mr. Khandan said they arrived at 8 a.m., about 20 hours after the attack, not having received food or water since the security forces arrived.
Female prisoners also were evacuated by force, shackled in pairs, and transferred to Gharchak prison, a different overcrowded facility on Tehran’s outskirts the following morning. Fariba Kamalabadi, a Baha’i faith leader serving a 20-year sentence, told her family that conditions for the women had deteriorated so badly, “I wish we had died with the missiles,” her daughter told BBC Persian.
The judiciary says Evin is now empty.
Mr. Shafakhah, the lawyer representing some of the political prisoners, said, “We can assume Evin prison is closed forever, but oppression is not limited to a location, they will continue elsewhere.”
Farnaz Fassihi is the United Nations bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of the organization. She also covers Iran and has written about conflict in the Middle East for 15 years.
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