Among all Israel's targets in Iran, the strikes at Evin Prison left some people 'in disbelief'

Australia Broadcast Center

12 hours ago

Interrogations. Torture. Mock executions.
Accounts from inside Iran's Evin Prison are as harrowing as they are rare — many of those locked up inside never make it out.
The notorious facility, on the outskirts of the country's capital Tehran, is used to house political prisoners who dare show dissent to the country's Islamist regime.
In the final days of its war with Iran, Israel used fighter jets to bomb the jail, with the country's top politicians spinning the June 23 attack as a symbolic blow against its arch enemy.
Yesterday, Asghar Jahangir, a spokesperson for Iran's judiciary, was quoted in the country's Mizan news outlet as saying 71 people had been killed in the attack.
He said the number included "administrative staff, youth doing their military service, detainees, family members of detainees who were visiting them and neighbours who lived in the prison's vicinity".
Analysts interpreted the strikes as a clear sign Israel had expanded its targets from just military and nuclear facilities.
Anoosheh Ashoori, a British-Iranian engineer, was held in Evin prison from August 2017 to March 2022, after being accused of espionage.
He said he was abducted in the street while back in Iran to visit his mother after she had a knee operation.
He was bundled into a car, and his ordeal had begun.
"They blindfolded me and they ordered me to put my head on the lap of the person sitting next to my left," he said.
"After a while I could hear the traffic, the sound of the traffic fading."
Mr Ahoori was taken to Evin Prison.
Mr Ahoori said he was kept in solitary confinement, given "foul food", and prevented from sleeping, with a floodlight shined on his head.
"It was so frightening," he said.
"My days were in that 2 metre by 3 metre cell, with the sound of a malfunctioning air conditioning unit together with hearing all the sounds of crying, begging, whimpering of the others in the neighbouring cells."
During his time in Evin Prison, Mr Ashoori said he spent 116 days at two interrogation centres, including one run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
"The pressure was so much and the threats to kill my family members were so real," he said.
"After a while of sleep deprivation, long hours of interrogation, I mean, you just name it and it's happening to you."
A video shared by Israel's Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar on social media showed an entrance to the compound blown apart and the accompanying text: "Long live freedom, damn it!"
However, doubt has now been cast over that footage, with experts telling ABC News Verify it could be AI-generated.
That doesn't mean the jail wasn't hit, though.
Last week, Defence Minister Israel Katz said the air force was striking "regime targets and agencies of government repression" across Tehran, including Evin Prison.
Video broadcast on Iranian state television showed widespread destruction outside the facility, and emergency services carrying an injured man from the scene on a stretcher.
The jail was built about 50 years ago and has gained notoriety since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
It now houses thousands of protesters, journalists, people accused of espionage, activists and academics.
Human rights organisations have decried the number of inmates in Evin accused of arbitrary catch-all offences like "enmity against God" and "corruption on earth".
Both are punishable by death and are used by Iran's regime as judicial trump cards to arrest dissidents.
Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who was arrested while attending a conference in Iran, spent more than two years in the jail on charges of espionage.
She was eventually released in 2020 as part of a prisoner swap.
The Australian government described the allegations against her as "baseless".
Last week, she took to social media to post a video of Israel's strike on the facility and wrote: "Every single person who has ever passed under these gates, or has been forced to stand outside them to film the regime's propaganda, will be staring in disbelief at these scenes."
The anti-regime group Edaalate Ali hacked Evin Prison's CCTV cameras in 2021 and leaked the footage to expose human rights abuses taking place behind its walls.
In a post on the encrypted messaging service Telegram after Israel's attack, the organisation claimed Iranian authorities were trying to stop friends and relatives of people locked inside the jail from accessing the area.
"Let's break the chains of captivity together and free political prisoners," it wrote in one update, before encouraging people to head to the compound and help the inmates escape.
The footage it leaked made international headlines, and documented inmates being sexually harassed and beaten, as well as overcrowded cells and incidents of self-harm.
The videos were so shocking, even Iran's top prisons official, Mohammad Mehdi Haj Mohammadi, described the behaviour they uncovered as "unacceptable".
Amnesty International has documented multiple types of torture used at Evin Prison, including "floggings, electric shocks, mock executions, waterboarding, sexual violence, suspension, force-feeding of chemical substances, and deliberate deprivation of medical care".
Iranian-Kurdish rapper Saman Yasin was incarcerated at the facility for two years for taking part in Iran's 2022 uprising.
He has since detailed a "mock execution" he was subjected to, in which he was taken to a set of gallows and read his last rights.
"I was under that noose for about 15 minutes, I think," he told CNN earlier this year.
"I could tell that they had brought in a cleric, and he was reciting the Quran over my head … and he kept telling me: 'Repent, so that you go to heaven'."
One man, who was born in the jail, has told the ABC about visiting his parents there as a child.
He said he remembered an "ugly green hallway" and being interrogated by guards before entering.
Iranian officials have this month encouraged the country's judiciary to expedite trials for anyone accused of "collaborating" with Israel — something that would result in execution.
Israel's decision to bomb the jail has been criticised by the sister of one of its inmates.
French woman Neomie Kohler, whose sibling Cecile and her partner Jacques Paris have been incarcerated at Evin Prison since May 2022 on spying charges they deny, said the IDF's attack put innocent people "in mortal danger".
"This strike is completely irresponsible," she told the AFP news agency, adding: "This is really the worst thing that could have happened.
"We have no news, we don't know if they are still alive. We're panicking,"
Amit Segal, the chief political analyst for Israel's Channel 12 news, said in a post on social media that the strike on Evin Prison meant Benjamin Netanyahu's government "appears to be flirting with regime change" in Iran.
"This is an escalation by Israel, as it is now targeting not just Iranian military sites, but also Iranian institutions that oppress their own people — and don't directly affect Israel," he wrote.
Governments in both Israel and the US repeatedly claimed during the 12-day war that they were not trying to affect the downfall of Iran's government and its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Although US President Donald Trump did take to social media during the fighting to ask "if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why couldn't there be a Regime change???"