Evin Prison is a prison located in the Evin neighbourhood of Tehran, Iran. The prison is notable as the primary site for the housing of Iran’s political prisoners since 1972, before and after the Islamic Revolution, in a purpose-built wing nicknamed “Evin University” due to the number of intellectuals housed there. Evin Prison has been accused of committing “serious human rights abuses” against its political dissidents and critics of the government.
Evin Prison was constructed in 1972 under the reign of Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi. It is located at the foot of the Alborz Mountains. The grounds of the prison included an execution yard, a courtroom, and separate blocks for common criminals and female inmates. It was originally operated by the Shah’s security and intelligence service, SAVAK. It quickly supplanted Qasr Prison as the country’s “Bastille.” It was initially designed to house 320 inmates — 20 in solitary cells and 300 in two large communal blocks — and was expanded to hold more than 1,500 prisoners — including 100 solitary cells for political prisoners — by 1977.
Following the events of June 1963 and the rise of political unrest across the country, the detention and imprisonment of opponents of the Shah’s regime increased, and the number of detainees as a result of each incident as well.
At that time, the houses of detention were not responsive to the large population of detainees and up-to-date as well. The government was about to build new and more advanced prisons — in line with what is being done in other countries — and was supposed to use the equipment needed to maintain and control more prisoners.
Hence, the regime’s agenda was to build a modern prison and subsequently a location in northern Tehran was identified for this purpose and because of its geographical location, it is easily controlled and guarded by military and security forces. Besides, when detainees are transferred to the place, they are less visible to people. The place, which was then almost out of town, was previously used as temporary storage of weapons and equipment for SAVAK and also as a detention centre for spies for some time.
Evin Prison consisted of two parts: the administrative department and a prison with a capacity of 5,000. The office had interrogation and torture chambers.
The prison section itself consisted of two sections, old and new. The old prison was made up of solitary confinement cells, forty cells 120 x 120 cm in surface that reached a height of three meters to the ground. Absolutely alienated, in these cells, the inmates never understood the passage of night and day. The doors of the cells were iron and a small window was fitted to watch the prisoner out at certain intervals.
The general section of the prison had large rooms and accommodated inmates in multiple groups. In the new section, there were eighty 2 x 2.5 meters solitary confinement cells in ten wards. Each cell consisted of a toilet, a small washstand with hot and cold water tap, a ventilator, a metal grid-window with iron bars on top of the wall that was lined with lace, with only about 2 hours of sunlight in the daytime; There was a mattress and a tarpaulin, two military blankets, a small trash bin, a spoon, and a melamine glass, a bowl and plate and a tray. The jail floor was covered with a plastic parquet so that the noise of commuting not be heard. There was a small bathroom in each hallway and a shower in each bathroom. Each ward had a backyard — the size of the cell — with a metal and grid ceiling.
The prisoners in Evin Prison were usually not allowed to meet their relatives and, if for any reason, allowed to visit one of their relatives, they could have been met outside the prison.
The inmates were not allowed to work in solitary confinement and were only allowed to leave the cell only for the toilet. These cells were often damp and dark, and due to adverse air conditions, prisoners open-air to various diseases such as tuberculosis, rheumatism, and so on.
Living in the general section was better than the solitary. In this section, prisoners were allowed to cook, use the washroom and fresh air in the prison yard.
All prisoners transferred to Evin were considered to be among the most dangerous political figures by SAVAK, necessarily excruciated and tortured using various means and techniques in order to confess and introduce their accomplices.
Thus, the cruellest interrogators of the Shah regime’s prisons gathered in Evin. Rasouli, Kamangar (Dr. Kamali), Bahman Naderipour (Tehrani), Mohammad-Ali Sha’bani (Hoseyni), were among the well-known and violent interrogators and torturers of SAVAK, all joined to the administrative department. Torture was considered part of Evin Prison’s program of bringing to confession, such as pulling nails, whipping with cables, burning the body, electrical shocks, making mental stress, and ultimately execution.
Ahmad Sheykhi was one of the revolutionaries at the time of the Shah’s rule, who had been savagely tortured at the prison. Sheykhi, then 19, spent about three months in Evin Prison and eleven months in another after being detained for distributing anti-Shah statements from Khomeini, “Four times I was tortured in two consecutive days, every time about ten minutes,” he recounted. “They used electric cables and wires for flogging my (feet) while I was blindfolded. The first hit was very effective; you felt your heart and brain were exploding.”
Even more frightening was the torture device interrogators and prisoners referred to as the Apollo, named after the American lunar program. Those tortured sat in a chair and had a metal bucket strapped over their head, like a space helmet, that intensified their screams. ”They put my fingers and toes between the jaws of the vices firmly, whipped the soles of my feet with cables and put a metal bucket over my head,” Sheykhi said. “My own cries would twirl around inside the bucket and made me delirious and gave me headaches. They would hit the bucket with those cables as well.”
By 1977, Carter’s coming to power as President of the United States with the slogan of human rights protection caused a slight decrease in pressure on prisoners, especially in Evin Prison.
During the Islamic Revolution forming, people made many demands, one of which was the release of political prisoners. When the Shah’s rule got in the trouble arena, he was forced to release most political prisoners in the last months of his reign.
However, after the total collapse of the Imperial regime in February 1979, with the occupation of prisons, especially Evin Prison by the people, the rest of the political prisoners were released, and the interrogators, torturers, and security officials of the former regime were imprisoned. The newcomers were sentenced to death after trial and confession of crimes they had committed in the past.
The status of the Pahlavi regime’s prisons and behaviour to political prisoners, especially in Evin, has always been one of the matters of European newspapers and magazines. In 1977 and 1978, several human rights delegations from European countries came to Iran and had close talks with the prisoners.
Archive of The History of the Islamic Revolution
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