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Sayeh Seydal, an imprisoned Iranian dissident, narrowly escaped death when the Israeli missiles hit the prison of Evin de Tehran, where she was imprisoned. She had just left the prison clinic, a few moments before he was destroyed in the explosions.
The strikes of June 23 on Iran’s most notorious prison for political dissidents killed at least 71 people, including staff, soldiers, family members and people living nearby, the spokesman for Iranian magistracy, Asghar Jahangir said on Sunday.
In the chaos that followed, the authorities transferred Seydal and others to prisons outside of Tehran – overcrowded installations, known for their difficult conditions.
When she was able to call her family several days ago, Seydal pleaded for help.
“It is literally a slow death,” she said about the conditions, according to a recording of the call provided by her relatives, in accordance with the wishes of Seydal.
“The bombings of the United States and Israel did not kill us. Then, the Islamic Republic brought us into a place that will kill us practically,” she said.
Activists fear that Israel’s attacks will lead to repression
Pro-democracy activists and Iran rights fear paying the price of the 12-day air campaign in Israel to paralyze the country’s nuclear program. Many say now that the state, holder of the violation of its security, has already intensified its repression against adversaries.
Israel’s strike on Evin – targeting, he said, “repressive authorities” – have spread panic among the families of political prisoners, who were left to determine the fate of their loved ones. A week later, the families of those who were in cell isolation or under interrogation have still not heard of them.
Nobel Peace Peace Laureat Narges Mohammadi, a veteran activist who was imprisoned several times in Evinsaid that Iranian society, “to go to democracy, needs powerful tools to strengthen civil society and the women’s movement.”
“Unfortunately, the war weakens these tools,” she said in a video message to the Tehran Associated Press. The political space is already shrinking, the security forces increasing their presence in the streets of the capital, she said.
Fears of imminent executions
Many now fear a potential wave of executions targeting militants and political prisoners. They see a terrifying precedent: after the end of the Iranian war with Iraq in 1988, the authorities executed at least 5,000 political prisoners after superficial trials, then buried them in mass pits which have never been accessible.
Already during the Israel campaign, Iran executed six prisoners who were sentenced to death before the war.
Human rights activists based in Washington in Iran (HRA) have documented nearly 1,300 people arrested, most of them for espionage, including 300 to share content on social networks in just 12 days.
The Iranian Parliament accelerates a bill allowing greater use of the death penalty for accusations of collaboration with foreign opponents. The head of judicial power called for an accelerated procedure against those who “disrupt peace” or “collaborate” with Israel.
The prisoners dispersed after the strike
Evin prison, located in a high -end district at the northern edge of Tehran, housed around 120 men and women in its general services, as well as hundreds of others who are in its secret interrogation or solitary isolation units, according to HRA.
Prisoners include demonstrators, lawyers and activists who have campaigned for years against the authoritarian regime of Iran, corruption and religious laws, including the application of Islamic clothing to women. The authorities have crushed repeated waves of demonstrations nationwide since 2009 in repressions that have killed hundreds and imprisoned thousands of people.
The strikes hit Evin during the hours of visit, causing shock and panic.
Seydal, a scholarship of international law which has joined protest movements in the past two decades and which has been in and out of prison since 2023, his family told his family near death in the penitentiary clinic. The explosion overturned her to the ground, a parent who spoke in Seydal, said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
The visit rooms, the prosecutor’s office and several districts in prisoners were also strongly damaged, according to groups for defense of rights and relatives of prisoners. A missile struck the entrance to the prison, where prisoners are often seated while waiting to be taken to hospitals or courts.
“Attacking a prison, when the detainees stand in camera and they are unable to do the slightest thing to save themselves, can never be a legitimate target,” said Mohammadi. Mohammadi has just been released in December when his last sentence was briefly suspended for medical reasons.
During the night, the buses began to transfer prisoners to other establishments, according to Mohammadi and the families of prisoners. At least 65 women were sent to Qarchak prison, according to Mohammadi, who contacted them. Men were sent to the penitentiary of the Grand Tehran, housing criminals and prisoners of high security. The two are located south of Tehran.
Mohammadi told AP that his immediate fear was a lack of medical facilities and poor hygiene. Among women, there are several conditions with treatment, including the 73 -year -old civil rights activist Raheleh Rahemi, who has a brain tumor.
In his telephone call, Seydal described Qarchak as “hell”. She said women were packed in isolation, without hygiene care and limited food or drinking water.
“It stinks. Just pure dirt,” she said.
Seydal, 47, was sentenced for the first time in 2023. At the beginning of 2025, her leave was canceled, and she was attacked by security and faced new accusations after refusing to bring a Chador to the prosecutor’s office.
A brother disappears
Reza Younesi’s father and younger brother, Ali, have both been imprisoned in Evin for years. Now the family is terrified because Ali has disappeared.
Ali, a 25 -year -old graduate of a prestigious technical university, was serving a 16 -year sentence for “collusion to commit crimes against national security”. The penalty, widely criticized by rights groups, has been reduced, but the Ministry of Intelligence launched a new case against him for unknown accusations.
A few days before the strike on Evin, Ali was dragged out of his neighborhood and taken to an unknown place, according to his brother.
After the strike, their father, Mir-Yousef Younesi, saw no sign of Ali while he and other prisoners were transferred to the great penitentiary of Tehran. The father managed to make a call to his family, panic.
The disappearances in Evin are not uncommon. The guards sometimes remove political prisoners from the neighborhoods for interrogation. In some cases, they are condemned in secret and executed trials.
Reza Younesi said that the family lawyer could not discover information about his brother or the new accusations.
“We are all worried,” he said, speaking of Sweden where he is an associate professor at the University of Uppsala. “When there is no information from a prisoner, this almost means in any case that the person is under questioning and torture.”
‘All hope has gone’
Mehraveh Khandan grew up in a family of political activists. She spent a large part of her childhood and adolescence in Evin to visit her mother, the lawyer for Nasrin Sotoudeh rights, who was imprisoned on it several times.
His father, Reza Khandan, was thrown in Evin in December for the distribution of pimples opposing the compulsory scarf for women.
Now living in Amsterdam, the 25 -year -old woman tried to frantically find information about her father after the strike. Internet was cut and his mother had evacuated from Tehran. “I was just thinking who could die there,” she said. It took 24 hours before making his father say well.
In a family call later, his father told how he was sleeping on the ground in a crowded cell filled with insects to the prisoner of Grand Tehran.
At first, she thought that Evin’s strike could encourage the government to release prisoners. But after seeing mass and executions detention reports, “all this hope has disappeared,” she said.
The war “has just destroyed all the things that activists have started to build,” she said.
