Vida Mehrannia last spoke to her husband, Ahmadreza Djalali, on March 3, when he called from inside Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, as bombs rained down on Tehran.
“The connection was very bad, and it kept disconnecting, but he called me back, and we talked for maybe two minutes,” she told Foreign Policy.
It was the first time they’d been able to speak since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.
Djalali, a Swedish Iranian scientist, was arrested by the regime in 2016 during a visit to an Iranian university for an academic workshop. He was later convicted of espionage and sentenced to death, a charge refuted by international investigations. His family has been appealing for his release for almost a decade. Today, he’s just one of thousands of political prisoners at risk in Iran, both from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes and from a vengeful Iranian regime.
“He told me that they hear the explosions [from the bombs] close by, but the gates to their wards are locked shut, so they can’t go anywhere in case there’s fire or bombs,” Mehrannia said.
Iran’s prison population has been swollen since January, when a mass crackdown on protesters saw thousands of civilians massacred in the streets and tens of thousands arrested. A digital shutdown has made it hard to get accurate information out of the country, but according to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ own admission in late January, intelligence and security forces had summoned at least 11,000 people, while a judicial spokesperson said more than 10,000 people were referred for prosecution and 8,843 indictments were issued by Feb. 17. However, human rights organizationssay the number of detainees from the recent protests could be as high as 50,000, including minors.
Since the Israeli-U.S. attacks began, the regime has shut down the internet and limited communications. As information seeps out in trickles, family members of political prisoners outside Iran are deeply worried over the fate of their loved ones, unable to find safety or shelter amid increasing bombings.
Evin, which Mehrannia described as a “little caged city,” has a dark history of abuse of inmates, especially political protesters, dissenters, members of the opposition, and even journalists.
Located in northern Tehran, Evin is believed to hold “roughly 1,500 to 2,000 detainees,” according to researchers at Iran Human Rights Monitor (Iran HRM). The facility is sometimes even referred to as “Evin University” for the number of academics imprisoned there.
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