Torture in Iranian prisons

Recently, a hacker group, “edalat Ali (Ali’s Justice),” published 16 leaked videos from Tehran’s Evin Prison. These videos show beatings, deliberate neglect of people in need of medical care, mistreatment, sexual harassment of prisoners, among others. The atrocities depicted in the published videos are only the tip of the iceberg of crimes that occur every day in all Iranian prisons.

These videos were disseminated worldwide by numerous television channels and news agencies. They once again showed the true face of the Islamic Republic’s criminal regime. For 42 years now, there have been numerous reports and documentations about torture in Iranian prisons, confirmed and published by Amnesty International, among others.

The impact of this publication was so enormous that 24 hours later, the head of the Iranian prison authority first had to confirm the films. He then apologized to Khamenei, the judiciary, the parliament… but not to the victims of these atrocities, namely the prisoners. He described the abuses shown as isolated cases and the work of a few.

Amnesty’s Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Heba Morayef, said in a statement, “Torture and abuses are too systematic in Iranian prisons to be portrayed as the work of a few. Short apologies and promises to hold those responsible accountable are not enough to end Iran’s systemic impunity.”

In the inhuman ideology and ideas of the Islamic Republic, there are no human rights at all for political prisoners, who are referred to as “security prisoners.” The Islamic Republic’s judiciary takes it for granted to torture political prisoners them.

Regardless of the hacker group’s goals, the publication of this material was to the great detriment of the Islamic Republic’s regime. The images shown were not even from the political prisoners’ wards in Evin Prison. When prisoners are treated like this for different offenses, the question arises: how in closed interrogation rooms, secret torture centers, and the security cells of the Revolutionary Guards…the political prisoners are physically and psychologically abused.

Many political prisoners who have survived these medieval dungeons have documented and published their experiences.

An Amnesty International statement dated Aug. 25, 2021, said:” Floggings, electric shocks, mock executions, waterboarding, sexual violence, hanging, forced administration of chemical substances and deliberate deprivation of medical care” are among the documented torture methods in Iranian prisons.

The Islamic Republic’s reactionary regime has now ruled Iran for over four decades.

Torture, executions, physical and psychological abuse, sexualized violence have been on the agenda of this criminal regime from the first day it came to power.

Although the published video footage shows only the “tip of the iceberg of the torture epidemic” in Iranian prisons, it coincides with the anniversary of the massacre of political prisoners in the summer of 1988. Currently, the trial of Hamid Nouri, one of the actors of the torture and slaughter of the political prisoners, is also taking place in Stockholm.

All of this has demonstrated the bankruptcy of the Islamic Republic worldwide.