50mbuffalos.mono.net
 

Inside Evin Prison

Thousands of people have been arrested as dissidents and locked up, among other places in Iran's notorious Evin Prison. This is just one eye witness account, leaked by someone who was arrested and released after days in the facility, as it is pressed beyond its limits by mass arrests following calls in the Majlis to prosecute protesters and punish them "harshly".

"Reza" is a student who was released from the hospital yesterday. His account is conveyed over Twitter by one of the most prominent bloggers from the Green Revolution, repeated by some of the most trusted Iranian sources. It is credible as an eyewitness account of the procedures inside Iran's notorious Evin Prison, run by Basij, the paramilitary religious organization keeping Iran under its boot.


Today Reza is banned from the university and "starred", meaning marked by the government, under suspicion and subjected to surveillance.

(As you can tell the tweets have been edited)
Reza was imprisoned in Tehran, and he said all sort of people were there.

Some of them just unlucky people just walking in streets and captured for no reason.


Reza spent his first 48 hours of arrest at level -4 of ministry of interior building without food or water.


According to Reza some of the injured people already passed out, and a taxi driver looked like dead by that time.


Reza also said it looked like they have no idea what should they do with so many people.


Reza estimated around 200 people were in each room and there were not enough space to even sit on the ground.


There was also an awful problem of only one toilet for all people in there and a impossible time limit of around 1 minute for each person.

They didn't open the plastic handcuffs for a day and half, and they randomly beat up people.


Reza said the only exception was they didn't hit arrested people directly in the face.


He said in the second day some pain cloth people came with papers forcing people to sign them.


The papers were prewritten confessions all in different handwritings saying the signer is a member of a pro-Mousavi organization.


Detainees were also paid to go to streets and say things, admitting to having violated national security and Islam.


Reza said some people sign them and some other just faked their signatures and names.


There were not enough confession papers for all people.


All types of government agents came and went in the next couple of days, moving people, forcing them to walk or just stand.


A man came and said the detainees would be released today, but an hour later another came and told them they would be in prison for 10 years.

"So many people're put in Iran prison that prisoners only have standing space.

Apparently they released some people on that night, but moved Reza and some of the selected people to Evin.


Around 3am day 2 they started moving people in vans; Reza said a driver was talking to a Basiji about Evin prison is full.


Reza had no idea why they select some of the people and where they moved the others.


It took nearly 3 hours to get to the prison; Reza said the driver seemed to enjoy "wandering in the streets", and another hour passed just standing in the row at the entrance of prison and filling out forms.


In first day at Evin prison staff started searching for severely injured people and gave them some first aid.


They ran another confession show at Evin, this time with promise of instant freedom and new accusations.


In the last days, Reza said, it looked like the capturers got a little more organized and started searching for more specific cases among the arrested.


Unfortunately Reza's mother told everything she knew over the phone to a man calling from Evin.


The caller promised Reza's family they will release him if he's really innocent.


But after they learned Reza is a student, they moved him to a harsher environment with some other prisoners.


According to Reza some students from Polytechnic university were also there.


Guards prevented them from sleeping by keeping them standing all night long.


In the morning a man who introduced himself as intelligence agent came, saying he would record their confessions with a camera.


He promised that if one of them would confess in front of the camera, he would free them all, that they will blur his face, and he would have nothing to worry about.


At night around 10 PM they released Reza, and his family instantly moved him to a hospital, where he was treated for internal bleeding.


Note from the blogger on Twitter: "I skipped some of the incidents as Reza requested. He's very weak both mentally and physically, and I don't want to put him in more pressure of any kind right now. We passed a letter to Karoubi today describing everything we know about various students conditions."


Submitted, edited June 26, 2009
Create your own website with mono.net