Stop the Execution Spree in Iran

Amnesty International     |     June 1, 2023
The Iranian authorities are carrying out a horrific state-sanctioned killing spree under the guise of judicial executions. Those executed include people convicted of drug-related offences, protesters, political dissidents, and members of oppressed ethnic minorities. Call for states to urgently intervene to pressure the Iranian authorities to halt all executions now.  

What is the problem? 
The Iranian authorities are ruthlessly carrying out an execution spree. Prisons across the country have become sites of mass state-sanctioned killings under the guise of judicial executions. Since the start of 2023, authorities have implemented hundreds of death sentences. In the month of May alone, authorities executed three people a day on average. This arbitrary deprivation of people’s lives must stop.

Authorities have executed individuals in relation to drug-related offences, protesters and political dissidents. The death penalty is also used to target oppressed minority groups. This year, members of Iran’s Baluchi ethnic minority account for around 20% of recorded executions while making up only about 5% of Iran’s population.

In the first five months of this year, executions of people convicted of drug-related offences tripled compared to the same period last year, and are predominantly affecting the most impoverished communities. The authorities also executed individuals for their social media posts and for sexual relations between consenting adults.

The Iranian authorities are intensifying their use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression. They are using this ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment to torment and terrorize people in Iran and impose silence and subservience through brute force.

What can you do to help?
Sign the petition and urge states to immediately call on Iran to impose an official moratorium on all executions, send representatives to visit prisons holding people sentenced to death and seek attendance at trials of those charged with capital crimes. Given the crisis of impunity for mass arbitrary executions, states must also pursue meaningful pathways for holding Iranian officials to account.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/stop-the-execution-spree-in-iran/

Panic spreads in Iran after new suspected poison attacks on girls schools

The Washington Post     |     Babak Dehghanpisheh     |      April 26, 2023

It was 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday when the teacher began receiving frantic calls. There had been a gas attack on the girls elementary school where she taught, in the Kurdish region of western Iran.

She had not been in class that April morning but rushed to the school and found a chaotic scene: Students and a few of her fellow teachers were having difficulty breathing and said their eyes were burning. Some of the teachers had been beaten by furious parents and were crying, she said. Agents from the Ministry of Intelligence had arrived to investigate.

The teacher spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that her name and the location of her school not be revealed, fearing retaliation from the government.

In recent months across Iran, about 300 suspected gas attacks have hit more than 100 girls schools, according to Amnesty International. Deputy Health Minister Saeed Karimi said last month that 13,000 students had been treated for symptoms of suspected poisoning, according to the Shargh daily newspaper. No deaths were reported.

The attacks began in November in the holy city of Qom. A lull occurred when schools were closed for Nowruz, the Iranian new year, in late March. But the attacks appear to have picked up again over the past couple of weeks as schools reopened, sparking widespread panic and confusion.

“The parents are really scared, and a lot of them won’t send their kids to school anymore,” the teacher said in a telephone interview. “Some parents have said they are willing to have their child held back a year at school just to keep them out of danger.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in early March that those behind the attacks must be brought to justice. Soon after, the Ministry of Interior announced that more than 100 people in 11 provinces had been arrested. “Among those arrested are individuals with hostile motives with the goal of creating fear and panic among the people and students and to close schools and create a negative view toward the authorities,” the ministry said in a statement in the publication Hamshahri.

No charges appear to have been filed against those arrested.

The head of the Iranian parliament’s education committee, Alireza Monadi, said last month that tests conducted by the Ministry of Health had detected nitrogen gas in schools in Qom. But there has been no official government statement identifying what gas or gases may have been used.

“These have been very organized and coordinated attacks. It can’t be random people doing that,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights. “It’s either groups with the blessing of the authorities or forces within the authorities.”

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

The teacher in the Kurdish region said her colleagues reported smelling bleach and rotten fruit before falling ill. After the suspected attacks, schoolgirls have been hospitalized with symptoms including heart palpitations, vomiting and numbness in their limbs, according to Amnesty.

Two weeks ago, a 65-year-old man took his elderly mother to a hospital in the northeast city of Mashhad and found the lobby filled with about a dozen schoolgirls who he said were coughing and panting. He filmed the scene on his phone and shared the video with The Post.

The man said in an interview that he talked to one of the girls, who described sitting in class when she smelled something like sewage before feeling dizzy and short of breath.

Women and girls have been at the forefront of the anti-government uprising that erupted in September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict laws on female dress and died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.”

As the protests spread, hundreds of girls took off their headscarves at school and chanted anti-government slogans. In one video widely shared on social media in October, dozens of schoolgirls, many of them without the hijab, confronted a Ministry of Education official in the city of Karaj and chased him off the campus.

Women burning their headscarves became a defining image of the demonstrations, which have died down in recent weeks amid an increasingly brutal government crackdown. At least 530 people have been killed by security forces and nearly 20,000 detained, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. But some women and girls continue to protest the hijab law more casually — refusing to cover themselves in public while going about their daily activities.

“The issue of hijab and women is an Achilles’ heel for the leaders of the Islamic republic,” Mohammad Habibi, a spokesman for the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association, told The Post in an interview from Tehran last month.

“The setting aside of forced hijab and the visibility of this at the social level was definitely not acceptable for the authorities, especially religious and extremist elements,” he added. “They could not accept this open social atmosphere.”

Habibi was arrested on April 5 and taken to Evin prison, his wife Khadijeh Pakzamir tweeted. On April 11, she tweeted that phone communication with him had been cut off.

Organized attacks against women have happened before in Iran. In 2014, at least four women were sprayed in the face with acid in the city of Isfahan in what many suspected was a campaign by religious extremists to enforce conservative dress codes. At the time, the government came under similar criticism for not pursuing the case more aggressively. Although arrests were made, no one was charged in the attacks.

The government has tried to point to other possible causes for the illnesses at girls schools, according to activists and health-care workers. Official meetings have been organized at hospitals to inform medical personnel about the Ministry of Health’s protocols for dealing with suspected poisoning cases.

Doctors have been told they should console the victims and their families and tell them it is a stress-related issue, a psychiatrist who attended two recent meetings at a hospital in northern Mazandaran province said in an interview. They also spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, fearing backlash from the authorities.

The World Health Organization told The Post that it “has offered support to [Iran’s] Ministry of Health in the management of these events from a public health perspective” and that an expert team “is on standby for deployment should this be requested.”

The teacher at the elementary school in the Kurdish region said that two of her colleagues were hospitalized after the suspected gas attack. She said one of them told her last week that she was still experiencing terrible headaches and numbness in her hands and feet.

Intelligence agents have returned to the school several times, she said, interviewing administrators and confiscating CCTV footage. The principal of the school told her that agents appeared to be looking for footage of parents, some of whom chanted anti-government slogans and argued with them.

“Many people suspect the government is responsible,” said the teacher. “They say that the government is trying to discourage girls from coming to school or that the government doesn’t want the ‘woman, life, freedom’ movement to start up again.”

Panic spreads in Iran after new suspected poison attacks on girls schools

Child detainees in Iran subjected to flogging, Shocks and sexual violence

CHILD DETAINEES IN IRAN SUBJECTED TO FLOGGING, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN BRUTAL PROTEST CRACKDOWN

Amnesty International     |     March 16, 2023

Iran’s intelligence and security forces have been committing horrific acts of torture, including beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence against child protesters as young as 12 to quell their involvement in nationwide protests, said Amnesty International today.

Marking six months of the unprecedented popular uprising in Iran, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, Amnesty International reveals the violence meted out to children arrested during and in the aftermath of protests. The research exposes the torture methods that the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij, the Public Security Police and other security and intelligence forces used against boys and girls in custody to punish and humiliate them and to extract forced “confessions.”

“Iranian state agents have torn children away from their families and subjected them to unfathomable cruelties. It is abhorrent that officials have wielded such power in a criminal manner over vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anguish upon them and their families and leaving them with severe physical and mental scars. This violence against children exposes a deliberate strategy to crush the vibrant spirit of the country’s youth and stop them from demanding freedom and human rights,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The authorities must immediately release all children detained solely for peacefully protesting. With no prospect of effective impartial investigations into the torture of children domestically, we call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian  officials, including those with a command or superior responsibility, reasonably suspected of  criminal responsibility for crimes under international law, including the torture of child  protesters.”

Since the start of Amnesty International’s investigations into the Iranian authorities’ brutal crackdown on the uprising, the organization has documented the cases of seven children in detail. The organization obtained testimonies from the victims and their families, as well as further testimonies on the widespread commission of torture against scores of children from 19 eyewitnesses, including two lawyers and 17 adult detainees who were held alongside children. The victims and eyewitnesses interviewed were from provinces across Iran, including East Azerbaijan, Esfahan, Golestan, Kermanshah, Khorasan-e  Razavi, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Mazandaran, Sistan and Baluchestan, Tehran, and Zanjan.

Amnesty International has removed any reference to identifying details, such as the ages of the children and the provinces in which they were detained, in order to protect them and their families against reprisals.

MASS DETENTION OF CHILDREN

Iranian authorities have admitted that the total number of people detained in connection with the protests was above 22,000. While they have not provided a breakdown of how many of those detained were children, state media reported that children comprised a significant portion of protesters. Based on testimonies of dozens of detainees from across the country who witnessed security forces detaining scores of children, coupled with the fact that children and youth have been at the forefront of protests, Amnesty International estimates that thousands of children could have been among those swept up in the wave of arrests.

Amnesty International’s findings indicate that arrested children, like adults, were first taken, often while blindfolded, to detention centers run by the Revolutionary Guards, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Public Security Police, the investigation unit of Iran’s police (Agahi) or the Basij paramilitary force. After days or weeks of incommunicado detention or enforced disappearance, they were moved to recognized prisons. Plainclothes agents abducted others from the streets during or in the aftermath of protests, took them to unofficial places such as warehouses, where they tortured them before abandoning them in remote locations. Such abductions were conducted without any due process and were intended to punish, intimidate and deter children from participating in protests.

Many children have been held alongside adults, contrary to international standards, and subjected to the same patterns of torture and other ill-treatment. A former adult detainee told Amnesty International that, in one province, Basij agents forced several boys to stand with their legs apart in a line alongside adult detainees and administered electric shocks to their genital area with stun guns.

Most of the children arrested over the past six months appear to have been released, sometimes on bail pending investigations or referral to trial. Many were only released after being forced to sign “repentance” letters and promising to refrain from “political activities” and to attend pro-government rallies.

Before releasing them, state agents often threatened children with the prosecution on charges carrying the death penalty or with the arrest of their relatives if they complained.

In at least two cases documented by Amnesty International, despite the threat of reprisals, victims’ families filed official complaints before judicial authorities, but none were investigated.

RAPE AND OTHER SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Amnesty International’s documentation also reveals that state agents used rape and other sexual violence, including electric shocks to genitals, touching genitals, and rape threats as a weapon against child detainees to break their spirits, humiliate and punish them,

and/or extract “confessions.” This pattern is also widely reported by adult women and men detainees.

State agents also hurled sexual slurs at detained girls and accused them of wanting to bare their naked bodies simply for protesting for women’s and girls’ rights and defying compulsory veiling.

One mother told Amnesty International that state agents raped her son with a hosepipe while he forcibly disappeared. She said:

“My son told me: ‘They hung [me] to the point that I felt like my arms were about to rip off. I was forced to say what they wanted because they raped me with a hosepipe. They were taking my hand and forcibly making me fingerprint the papers’.”

BEATINGS, FLOGGINGS, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND OTHER ABUSES

Security forces regularly beat children at the time of arrest, in vehicles during transfer, and in detention centers. Other torture methods recounted include floggings, administering electric shocks using stun guns, the forced administration of unidentified pills, and holding children’s heads underwater.

In one case, several schoolboys were abducted for writing the protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” on a wall. A relative of one of the victims told Amnesty International that plainclothes state agents abducted the boys, took them to an unofficial location, tortured and threatened to rape them, and then dumped them semi-conscious in a remote area hours later. The boy told the relative:

“They gave us electric shocks, hit me in my face with the back of a gun, gave electric shocks to my back and beat me on my feet, back and hands with batons. They threatened that if we told anyone, they would  [detain us again], do even worse and deliver our corpses to our families.”

Victims and families told Amnesty International how state agents also choked children, suspended them from their arms or from scarves wrapped around their necks, and forced them to perform humiliating acts.

One boy recounted:

“They told us [over a dozen people] to make chicken noises for half an hour – for so long that we ‘lay eggs’.  They forced us to do push-ups for one hour. I was the only child there. In another detention center, they put 30 of us in a cage made for five people.”

State agents also used psychological torture, including death threats, to punish and intimidate children and/or compel them to make forced “confessions”. State media has broadcast the “forced confessions” of at least two boys detained during protests.

The mother of a girl who was detained by the Revolutionary Guards told Amnesty International:

“They accused her of burning headscarves, insulting the Supreme Leader and wanting to overthrow [the  Islamic Republic], and told her she will be sentenced to death. They threatened her not to tell anyone … They forced her to sign and fingerprint documents. She has nightmares and doesn’t go anywhere. She can’t even read her schoolbooks.”

Children were also held in cruel and inhuman detention conditions, including extreme overcrowding, poor access to toilet and washing facilities, deprivation of sufficient food and potable water, exposure to extreme cold and prolonged solitary confinement. Girls were held by all-male security forces with no regard for their gender-specific needs.  Children were also denied adequate medical care, including for injuries sustained under torture.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/child-detainees-in-iran-subjected-to-flogging-electric-shocks-and-sexual-violence-in-brutal-protest-crackdown/

Bipartisan House Resolution Endorses a Republic in Iran

Bipartisan House Resolution Rejects Monarchic, Religious Dictatorship, Endorses a Republic in Iran

Townhall     |     Majid Rafizadeh     |     Feb 15, 2023

As we marked the 44th anniversary of the 1979 revolution in Iran, we were reminded of the transformative power of people’s movements to bring about change. The overthrow of the Pahlavi monarchy and the establishment of a republic in Iran held great promise for the people, but it was quickly subverted by Khomeini and his reactionary mullahs, who have since been responsible for unimaginable human rights abuses, terrorism, regional destabilization, and the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Since September, the Iranian theocracy has faced a wave of social upheaval and mass protests demanding democratic change. Women, young people, and scores of others have taken to the streets to call for a secular republic that respects their individual rights and freedoms. These calls have not gone unheard, as evidenced by a significant conference held on Capitol Hill this month, where several US lawmakers introduced House Resolution 100, calling for a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear republic in Iran.

The resolution currently has an unprecedented number of 165 bipartisan cosponsors, and it strongly condemns the violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism of the Iranian regime. Furthermore, it rejects both the Shah’s deposed monarchy and the ruling theocracy, and voices support for a democratic and secular republic in Iran.

A senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Tom McClintock, said the measure expresses the united support of the American people for the Iranian people in their struggle for a better future. It is also noteworthy that the resolution strongly condemns the violations of human rights and the state-sponsored terrorism of the Iranian regime.

Moreover, it rejects both the Shah’s deposed dictatorship and ruling theocracy, and voices support for a democratic and secular republic in Iran.

Addressing the congressional conference, the President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, rightly pointed out the significance of Congress’s move, adding that it sends a clear message to the people of Iran that they are not alone in their fight for freedom and democracy.

The Iranian people’s passion for freedom and their commitment to liberating their homeland is an inspiration to all who know them. Congress has done the right thing by joining voices with a growing chorus calling for liberty and justice in Iran.

This resolution is a significant step forward in the fight for democracy in Iran, and it sends a message to the regime in Iran that the world is watching. The people of the United States and the international community stand firmly behind the protesters and the people that Tehran is oppressing and killing.

Despite its ebbs and flows, the ongoing revolution in Iran is destined to succeed because there are numerous signs that the people are rejecting all forms of dictatorship, including the Shah’s monarchy that devastated the country’s socio-political progress until 1979. Iranians are now looking only to the future, which will see the establishment of a democratic republic based on the separation of religion and state, and gender equality.

It is time for the regime in Iran to change. This is a regime that has responded to peaceful protests with violence, massacres, torture, and imprisonment. It must be held accountable for its crimes against humanity, including the massacre of political prisoners in 1988. Otherwise, the regime’s murder machine will continue to outpace international condemnations.

Some 10,000 Iranian supporters of the NCRI who rallied in the street of Paris this past Sunday echoed the same message, calling on the European Union to end its appeasement of Iran and support a democratic, secular republic in Iran. They were joined by John Bercow, the former Speaker of the British Parliament, and Ingrid Betancourt, former Columbian Senator and Presidential Candidates, who voiced support for the cause of freedom and democracy in Iran.

The world cannot stand by and watch as the people of Iran are denied their basic rights. Adopting the example of the US Congress, the world must take action to support the people of Iran in their fight for freedom and democracy. Not the just the future of Iran, but that of the entire region and the world is at stake. A democratic Iran will benefit everyone. The scourge of the mullahs should end, not tomorrow, but today.

https://townhall.com/columnists/majidrafizadeh/2023/02/15/bipartisan-house-resolution-rejects-monarchic-religious-dictatorship-endorses-a-republic-in-iran-n2619584

Bipartisan Senators Support Iran Uprising

Bipartisan Senators Support Iran Uprising, Call for Increased Pressure on Iran Ayatollahs
by OIAC      |     December 8, 2022

At the US Senate Kennedy Caucus Room, bipartisan Senators expressed support for Iran protesters seeking democratic change & called for more sanctions

WASHINGTON, DC – At a briefing held in the historic Senate Kennedy Caucus Room, bipartisan Senators and prominent policy experts expressed support for nationwide protests for democratic change in Iran and called for additional pressure on the clerical regime.

Addressing the event virtually, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, the President-Elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran said, “All evidence suggests that the regime has reached the point of no return in the final phase of its rule. The Shah’s dictatorship had a well-equipped army of 400,000 men, but it could not overcome the will of the Iranian people.” “Why a child-killing regime that brutally represses women and imposes discrimination against them is a member of the UN institutions. Is this not an insult to humanity? The Iranian Resistance expects the US Senate to lead an initiative to expel the regime from UNICEF.”

I’d like to thank & recognize the National Council of Resistance of Iran for their commitment to elevating your voices, the voices of Iranians inside of Iran & constantly advocating for their freedom”

— Chairman Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
In his speech, Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) who Chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said, “Let me start off by thanking the Organization of Iranian American Communities for putting together today’s event on Capitol Hill. I’m thrilled to see so many Iranian Americans from across the country, and I’d like to thank and recognize the National Council of Resistance of Iran for their commitment to elevating your voices, the voices of Iranians inside of Iran and constantly advocating for the freedom of the Iranian people.” The spilling of protesters’ blood should never, never, never be normalized, he noted and then added, “and the United States and the international community cannot be silenced. And that’s why just this week, we passed my Senate Concurrent Resolution 47 commending the bravery of Iranian protesters on behalf of the United States government.” He concluded, “Let us continue to protect those in Ashraf 3 and I am committed to doing that. Let’s keep fighting the senseless repression of women and girls.”

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said, “We live in a historic times and historic moment, so I stand with Jeanne [Senator Shaheen] to see what we can do to lend our voice to the people who have been out in the streets, the villages, and the towns of Iran saying enough is enough. I think we have reached the point now in the 21st century where it is a time of choosing and I choose the people of Iran over the Ayatollahs.”

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) referenced ongoing protests and said, “and we are standing in awe with what is happening in Iran, but it is not enough to be impressed by their bravery. We must also stand in lockstep with the people of Iran as they struggle to take back their lives and freedoms.” She urged the Biden administration to enforce existing sanctions and place additional sanctions on clerical regime officials and entities.”

Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) concurred and said, “I think we have to put maximum pressure on the Iranian leadership…To the Iranian people, and to Iranian Americans, know that I stand with you every step of the way.” He then added, “ I will stand with you every step along the way and hopefully, we will see a change so that tens of millions of honest, hardworking, freedom-seeking Iranians begin to enjoy their freedoms.”

Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) said, “I see this extraordinary courage by women and girls [In Iran] who are pricking the consciousness of our world, who are calling the moral imagination of their own people, who are fighting not just for basic rights and freedom but are also what should be, to me, fundamental for all humanity, this idea of human dignity and respect.”

Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) said, “When the government has to raid the biggest university to keep people subjugated, there is clearly a problem there that the world needs to stand up for. People are willing to risk their lives and even give their lives for freedom, the least we can do is everything we can possibly do to encourage that and to support that.” He added, “I’ve been working for some time now with the government in Albania, and I went to Albania to see people once . The U.S. Embassy in Albania could be much more helpful than they are. We continue to encourage that.”

Senator John Boozman (R-AR) said, “I think you know most of us are firmly in your corner. My commitment is to help in any way that we can, certainly on the topic of nuclear weapons and human rights.”

Speaking to the women of Iran, Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) noted, “I want to say loudly and clearly that we are moved by your courage and your strength. And to all Iranians calling for their fundamental rights to be respected, let me say loudly and clearly that the United States stands with you. We are calling for an immediate end to the barbaric detention of peaceful protesters, an immediate end to the blatant human rights violations.”

Former Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) said, “there is one leader that has been working on this for decades, who has seen this revolution coming for a long time and has supported it, and that is Mrs. Rajavi, the President elect of the NCRI. It was beautiful to hear her today and Mrs. Rajavi has had the foresight to predict that women would lead this revolution. In a speech 17 years ago, she said, “In the tragedy of women in our enchained homeland, Iran, women’s human identity has been denied, but I assure you that those oppressed today will be the victors of tomorrow.”

Former Senators Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and former U.S. Ambassador Marc Ginsberg also addressed the briefing.

Mrs. Sheila Neinavaei and Mrs. Mitra Samani who had spent seven and four years respectively in the notorious Evin Prison outlined harrowing conditions of political prisoners in Iran as well as their own experiences. Dr. Soolmaz Abooali, a fifteen-time U.S. national and three-time world champion in traditional karate moderated this event.

Iran Protests Spread with Uprising at Prison

Activists say prisoners chanted antigovernment slogans;
Parliament clears police in Mahsa Amini’s death.
The fire Saturday at Evin Prison in Tehran, which the U.S. says is a political prison for dissidents and foreigners and is known to hold demonstrators from recent protests.

WSJ     |     By Benoit Faucon and David S. Cloud      |      Oct. 16, 2022

The protest movement sweeping Iran spread to a Tehran prison known as a symbol of political repression in a new challenge to the Islamic Republic, with detained dissidents chanting antigovernment slogans before violence erupted and a deadly fire engulfed the facility, activists said.

Authorities said the fire killed four inmates and blamed a planned escape attempt on Saturday for the mayhem at Evin Prison, a complex in north Tehran erected by the shah five decades ago that serves as a political prison for dissidents and foreigners. A large fire was visible at Evin from the densely populated neighboring communities, and loud bangs were heard through much of the night.

The melee started in a ward of the prison that houses inmates convicted of financial crimes and other criminal offenses but quickly spread to areas where political prisoners and dissidents are held, prompting guards to bring in reinforcements and firefighters to put down the protests and extinguish the fire, according to officials and human rights activists.

By Sunday morning, authorities said they were back in control, but the unrest marked another indication that the country’s Islamic leadership is facing one of the gravest tests in its 43-year existence. The protests that first focused on the country’s mandatory hijab, or head covering, for women have morphed into something larger, calling for the end of the strict Islamic governance ushered in with the country’s 1979 revolution. While authorities said the prison violence had nothing to do recent protests, witnesses and advocates for the prisoners said the extraordinary incident at Evin was another sign that the leaderless movement was spreading beyond the government’s control.

Protests continued across Iran over the weekend, according to footage verified by Storyful, which is owned by News Corp, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal. In Ardabil, a town in northwest Iran, there were demonstrations after a teachers’ association said a schoolgirl was beaten to death after a pro-regime event turned into an anti-government protest. The government has denied responsibility, saying she had died from a heart condition.

By the accounts of both activists and the government, the violence at Evin began on Saturday.

In the women’s ward of the prison, some inmates broke down the door of the two-story building housing around 45 prisoners, and moved into the staff area of the prison yard, where they started chanting antigovernment slogans, said Atena Daemi, a human-rights activist in Tehran who was released from Evin eight months ago after seven years imprisoned there. She said she had heard accounts of the riot from eight families, who received brief calls Sunday from prisoners in Evin’s women’s ward.

A prison guard warned the women, some of whom weren’t wearing mandatory headscarves, that they would be killed unless they went back into the building, Ms. Daemi said, citing the accounts told by the families.

Guards fired tear gas and threw “something like a grenade,” Ms. Daemi said she was told. Women also reported seeing guards armed with rifles aiming at them with laser sights, which project a visible beam.

Two women prisoners—Sepideh Kashani, an environmental activist, and Zahra Safaei, a political activist—were overcome by the tear gas and needed treatment, Ms. Daemi said, citing accounts from the families. None of the women imprisoned in the ward were arrested during recent protests, she said.

“They said everybody in the women’s ward is safe, but the situation is tense,” Ms. Daemi said. “Due to the large amount of tear gas used in the prison, some of them have burning eyes and shortness of breath.”

The government has arrested hundreds of protesters, jailing the most politically active ones in Evin, said members of the protest movement and human-rights activists. They include six students at the Sharif University who were arrested when the elite Tehran institution was surrounded by police two weeks ago, say students who escaped the raid. Another affected ward held political prisoners, according to accounts gathered by the Free Union of Iranian Workers, the main umbrella of trade unions, which has many members held at Evin. Some Evin prisoners had gathered in the courtyard and chanted slogans against the government on Friday, the union said.

Then on Saturday, prison officials tried to intimidate the prisoners, who later protested and rioted, the union said. When family members went to the prison to check on their relatives’ safety, they were initially told Sunday that they wouldn’t be allowed to talk with prisoners, Ms. Daemi added. But when the families protested, they were allowed to have brief conversations.

On Sunday morning, families of detainees could be seen outside the prison seeking news of their jailed relatives. More than 15,000 inmates are said to be held at the sprawling complex on the outskirts of Tehran. Authorities said Saturday’s melee began in Ward 7, which is supposed to be for inmates convicted of financial crimes. The inmates set fire to a sewing workshop, according to Iran’s state media, adding that some prisoners had blades and tried to escape the prison. When prisoners from Ward 7 broke out of their building, they freed prisoners in Ward 8, Ms. Daemi said.

Among those in Ward 8 was Emad Shargi, an Iranian-American incarcerated at the prison on what the U.S. has called false charges, according to his sister, Neda Sharghi. She talked to him briefly Saturday night by phone, she said, hearing shooting and yelling in the background. Later he was moved to another ward, she said.

“He was moved from where the riots were,” she said. “We haven’t been able to get much more information.”

By early Sunday morning, Iranian state television aired a video showing that the prison was calm, though damaged by the fire. State media said the unrest had involved only prisoners convicted of theft and financial crimes, a claim disputed by human-rights activists.

Four inmates died of smoke inhalation and 61 were injured, state news agency IRNA said.

Siamak Namazi, an Iranian-American imprisoned on espionage-related charges rejected by Washington as baseless, has been detained at Evin for seven years. His lawyer, Jared Genser, said Mr. Namazi was placed in solitary confinement after the riots Saturday and told it was “for his own protection.” He was briefly furloughed earlier this month then returned to Evin.

Some prisoners were without water and food Sunday, according to Ms. Daemi, citing conversations with families of men incarcerated there. She said 45 prisoners had been transferred from Ward 8 since the melee, and an additional 14 who had been injured were returned without treatment.

Azin Mohajerin, the lead human-rights officer at Miaan Group, a U.S.-based nongovernmental organization focused on human rights in Iran, said Evin and the rest of the prisons system in Iran is “overcrowded, above its maximum capacity after the large number of arrests during the protests.” Mr. Mohajerin, who is compiling a list of detainees and their conditions, said that Iran’s prisons are so full with detained protesters that arrested female high-school students are now mixed with adults in crowded cells.

Evin Prison and its management were sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2018 for human-rights abuses. “Prisoners held at Evin Prison are subject to brutal tactics inflicted by prison authorities, including sexual assaults, physical assaults, and electric shock,” the Treasury Department said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-protests-spread-with-uprising-at-prison-11665932021