Evin Prison
District 2, Iran · built 1963
Evin Prison (Zendân-e-Evin) is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. Established in 1972, and particularly notorious since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it has become the Islamic Republic's most infamous detention facility. The prison serves as the primary site for incarcerating political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, dual nationals, and foreign citizens accused of espionage or propaganda offenses. The prison has become internationally known for its systematic human rights abuses. Numerous reports document torture methods such as beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, prolonged solitary confinement, forced confessions, sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse. In recent years, cases such as the mistreatment of imprisoned scholar Mahvash Seydal have highlighted the regime's deliberate denial of medical care to female political prisoners as a form of punishment. A deadly fire in October 2022 further exposed the prison's chaotic conditions and the authorities' failure to protect detainees. Evin Prison has become a symbol of the Islamic Republic's apparatus of repression, silencing dissent through fear, violence, and psychological terror. Often likened to 'Iran's Bastille,' it holds a special place in the political imagination of many Iranians, symbolizing the Islamic Republic's absolutist rule and int
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