Evin Prison: The Infamous Iranian Jail Struck By Israel

As plumes of smoke billowed from parts of Tehran on Monday, among the Israeli targets was Iran's Evin prison, a notorious detention facility in the capital. As the two countries traded missiles, Tel Aviv hit Evin Prison, which houses dissidents and political prisoners, including opposition politicians, activists, lawyers, journalists, environmental activists and students.

Projectiles caused "damage to parts of the facility" but the prison was "under full control," IRNA, the Iranian state news agency, said.

All About Iran's Evin Prison

When the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the US-backed Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's regime, not much from the past was retained; not at least in its original form. Except, perhaps, a detention facility in the hills of northern Tehran.

Built in 1971, the Evin Prison was used by the Shah regime to detain thousands of political prisoners in horrifying conditions, tortured, and executed there under the control of Shah's secret police, SAVAK, according to Human Rights Watch.

Eight years later, the tables turned, and the new government used the same detention facility, filling it with those once associated with monarchy. In the following years, anyone seen as a threat to the new Islamic Republic was taken there.

Over the years, Evin has expanded and now has multiple buildings. While the National Prisons Office is under control of the prison, different wards have been handed to the judicial authority, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security over the last few years.

Evin was a place to be feared, multiple people who were held in the notorious facility told the HRW. Political detainees were pulled out for interrogations much more frequently than those arrested for common crimes, they said.

Authorities at the prison use threats of torture, indefinite imprisonment and targeting family members, deception and humiliation, multiple daily interrogations lasting up to five or six hours, denial of medical care, and denial of family visits, against political prisoners.

According to Amnesty International, even female prisoners, who have been tortured, were denied adequate medical care.

Apart from that, the authorities have also been accused of using incommunicado solitary confinement to break the resolve of detainees. This, reports say, is done so that they capitulate under pressure and agree to be videotaped, sign confessions, and give information about their political affiliations and associates.  

The detainees have described the conditions as "white torture", which involved keeping them in twenty-four-hour artificial light, denying communication with other prisoners and access to lawyers, families, and medical health professionals.