Iranian state media claimed on Tuesday that 27 inmates from the infamous Evin prison in northern Tehran are still at large weeks after an Israeli airstrike struck the facility, allowing 75 prisoners to escape.
A news website linked to the Iranian judiciary said 48 of the 75 escapees have been recaptured since the June 23 airstrike, launched by Israel as part of “Operation Rising Lion,” also known as the 12-Day War.
The Israeli judiciary claimed the prisoners who escaped after the airstrike were “doing time for minor offenses.” The regime commonly keeps political prisoners at Evin, including dissidents, journalists, protesters, and foreign nationals taken as hostages.
The regime previously claimed that only a “non-significant number of prisoners” escaped after the bombing, and all were quickly recaptured.
Command centers used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a designated terrorist organization, were struck on the same day. Israeli warplanes also bombed several major symbols of the oppressive Iranian regime, including a “doomsday clock” supposedly counting down the days until the “Zionist regime” of Israel will be destroyed in the year 2040.
Evin Prison was presumably hit because it is a fearsome symbol of the regime’s cruelty, ranked among the worst dungeons in the world. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions against prison officials in October 2022 for subjecting prisoners to “torture and other forms of physical abuse.”
This did not prevent some human rights organizations which have long complained about the abuse of prisoners at Evin from complaining about the Israelis targeting the prison.
Amnesty International (AI), for example, charged the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with “killing and injuring scores of civilians and causing extensive damage and destruction in at least six locations across the prison complex.”
“The bombing by the U.S. and Israel didn’t kill us. Then the Islamic Republic brought us to a place that will practically kill us,” countered dissident Sayeh Seydal, who was imprisoned at Evin during the Israeli strike.
The BBC reported on Tuesday that conditions for Iran’s prisoners have become “unbearable and inhumane” since the bombing, as many were moved from Evin to other facilities that were already unsanitary, overcrowded, and brutal. Some Iranian families say the evacuation of Evin is finally shining a spotlight on just how horrible Iran’s other prisons are.
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