BEIRUT (news agencies) — Sayeh Seydal, a jailed Iranian dissident, narrowly escaped death when Israeli missiles struck Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she was held. She had just stepped out of the prison’s clinic moments before it was destroyed.
The June 23 strikes on Iran’s most notorious prison for political dissidents killed at least 71 people, including staff, soldiers, visiting family members and people living nearby, Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir said Sunday. In the ensuing chaos, authorities transferred Seydal and others to prisons outside Tehran — overcrowded facilities known for their harsh conditions.
When she was able to call her family several days ago, Seydal pleaded for help.
“It’s literally a slow death,” she said of the conditions, according to a recording of the call provided by her relatives, in accordance with Seydal’s wishes.
“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,” she said.
Iran’s pro-democracy and rights activists fear they will pay the price for Israel’s 12-day air campaign aiming to cripple the country’s nuclear program. Many now say the state, reeling from the breach in its security, has intensified its crackdown on opponents.
Israel’s strike on Evin — targeting, it said, “repressive authorities” — spread panic among families of the political prisoners, who were left scrambling to determine their loved ones’ fates. A week later, families of those who were in solitary confinement or under interrogation still haven’t heard from them.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, a veteran activist who has been imprisoned multiple times in Evin, said that Iranian society, “to get to democracy, needs powerful tools to reinforce civil society and the women’s movement.”
“Unfortunately, war weakens these tools,” she said in a video message to media from Tehran. Political space is already shrinking with security forces increasing their presence in the streets of the capital, she said.
Many now fear a potential wave of executions targeting activists and political prisoners. They see a terrifying precedent: After Iran’s war with Iraq ended in 1988, authorities executed at least 5,000 political prisoners after perfunctory trials, then buried them in mass graves that have never been accessed.
During Israel’s military campaign, Iran executed six prisoners who were sentenced to death before the war.
The Washington-based Human Rights Activists in Iran documented nearly 1,300 people arrested, most on charges of espionage, including 300 for sharing content on social media in just 12 days.
