Evin prison

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The Evin Prison ( Persian زندان اوین Zendan-e Ewin ) is the most famous Iranian prison . It is located on the northern outskirts of Tehran and was created in 1971 through the renovation of the former domicile of Seyyed Zia'eddin Tabatabai . Originally designed for 320 inmates,up to 1,500 people were imprisonedthere during thetime ofthe Shah andup to 15,000 peoplesince the beginning of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. According to the prison administration, a total of 2,575 men and 375 women were in prison in 2006. Evin Prison is notorious for holding political prisoners from Iran.

Evin prison

Shah time

During the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , clerics of today's (2009) head of state, leaders of the People's Mojahedin , Fedajin-e Islam and the Tudeh party were imprisoned in Evin Prison, the central prison of SAVAK . Well-known inmates included Hossein Ali Montazeri , Mahmud Taleghani , Ali Chamene'i , Akbar Hāschemi Rafsanjāni , Khosrow Golsorkhi and Massoud Rajavi .

Islamic regime

After the Islamic Revolution, opponents of the regime, critics, writers, editors-in-chief and deposed ministers were among those imprisoned. Before the Iranian presidential election in 2001 , the list of inmates read “like a who's who ” of Iran.

Known inmates

Known prisoners were or are:

torture

The prison must not be photographed from inside or outside; Recordings are therefore rare. The photographer Zahra Kazemi was tortured to death in 2003 for taking pictures in front of this prison. Marina Nemat spent over two years in Evin Prison. She described her experiences in a biography that appeared in 2006 in English and later in other languages. None of her cell mates in wing 246 are said to have survived their imprisonment. According to her, the wing, which was occupied by 50 people during the Shah's time, was occupied by 650 women during Nemat's detention.

Section 209 , which is subordinate to the secret service and in which political prisoners are detained, is notorious for its single cells with a floor area of ​​1 × 2 m . Torture and sexual abuse (including pushing hard objects into the rectum or vagina) to force prisoners to make confessions is a common practice in Evin Prison. “Prisoners were put in small coffins measuring 50 × 80 × 140 cm for months. In 1984 there were 30 prisoners in such coffins. Some went crazy, ”said Abbas Amir-Entezam , deputy prime minister under Mehdi Bāzargān in 1979 and imprisoned in Evin Prison for 27 years.

Roxana Saberi also describes white torture , a combination of manipulation, intimidation, isolation [...], which leads to false confessions or slander from friends and colleagues. “Many prisoners keep the truth about their health from the prison doctor. They fear that the diseases mentioned or the drugs they used could be explained as the cause of their unwanted death in prison, ”said Mehdi Khazali, son of Ayatollah Abolghassem Khazali. → see Said Emami

Executions

The 1988 mass execution of political prisoners in Iran began in Evin Prison. Executions after convictions are carried out on site, mainly by hanging , for example at Abdolmalek Rigi .

The prison is not exclusively occupied by political prisoners ; conventional offenders are detained in a different part of the building.

European sanctions

The current (2011) General Secretary of the Tehran Prison Administration, Farajollah Sedaqat, who headed Evin Prison until October 2010, has been on European sanctions lists since April 12, 2010, alongside the head of Evin Department 350, Mostafa Bozorgnia. Sedaqat has been blamed for torturing, threatening and pressuring large numbers of detainees in Evin. The head of the Iranian prison administration, Mohammad-Ali Zanjirei, is also on sanctions lists; he is accused of transferring numerous prisoners to solitary confinement.

Protests

In 2009 there were rallies in front of the prison by relatives of those detained in the protests following the Iranian presidential election in 2009 . In 2010 these took place on a daily basis; Every evening from 5 pm to 11 pm, the prisoners were requested to be released and tortured.

See also

literature

as a novel
  • Ava Farmehri: Through the Sad Wood Our Corpses Will Hang. Series: Essential Prose Book, 134. Guernica, Oakville (Ontario) 2017, ISBN 978-1771831567 .

Movie

Maryam Zaree was born in Evin Prison in 1983. Her parents were both imprisoned there; they never talked about this time after their release. Maryam Zaree released the documentary Born in Evin in 2019 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. bbc.co.uk of June 14, 2006 Inside Iran's most notorious jail
  2. a b c Fariba Amini, September 4, 2009: A Place Called Evin ( Memento from August 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (German: A place called Evin )
  3. a b Katajun Amirpur: The arbitrariness has method . In: Die Zeit , May 31, 2001.
  4. BBC March 18, 2006: Iranian dissident freed from jail
  5. www.hrw.org (English)
  6. Clotilde Reiss. Ses 47 jours à la prison d'Evin
  7. She was sentenced to 33 years in prison and 148 lashes for her advocacy for women's rights .
  8. Death in the torture cell . In: Die Zeit , May 31, 2005.
  9. Marina Nemat: I'm not asking for my life . From the American by Holger Fock and Sabine Müller. Weltbild Verlag, Augsburg 2007. Title of the original: Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir . ISBN
  10. faz.net of July 30, 2007: I was the prisoner of Tehran
  11. süddeutsche.de from December 1, 2010 With luck: prison
  12. amnesty.de UA 262/2006
  13. "You must understand, you are very afraid - Abolfazl Eslami in conversation about Iranian foreign policy" , Jungle World No. 6, February 10, 2011
  14. see also Ervand Abrahamian: Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran , University of California Press 1999, p. 140.
  15. heise.de from April 17, 2011 A conversation with the journalist Roxana Saberi, who was incarcerated in Tehran's notorious Evin prison in 2009
  16. transparency-for-iran.org of March 31, 2011 Security Department 209
  17. alischiarsi.de The prison massacre of September 1988.
  18. Sina under the gallows - berlinonline.de from March 20, 2007 Sina under the gallows
  19. You have weapons, but we have cell phones . In: Die Welt, June 15, 2010.
  20. a b European Community: COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) No 359/2011 of April 12, 2011 concerning restrictive measures directed against certain persons, entities and bodies in view of the situation in Iran (PDF) , page L 100/9
  21. Iran News , accessed February 26, 2010.

Coordinates: 35 ° 47 ′ 45 ″  N , 51 ° 23 ′ 1 ″  E