Evin Prison () is a prison located in the Evin neighborhood of Tehran, Iran. Established in 1972, and particularly notorious since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, it has become the Islamic Republic's most infamous detention facility. The prison serves as the primary site for incarcerating political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, dual nationals, and foreign citizens accused of espionage or propaganda offenses.
The prison has become internationally known for its systematic human rights abuses. Numerous reports document torture methods such as beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, prolonged solitary confinement, forced confessions, sleep deprivation, and sexual abuse. In recent years, cases such as the mistreatment of imprisoned scholar Mahvash Seydal have highlighted the regime's deliberate denial of medical care to female political prisoners as a form of punishment. A deadly fire in October 2022 further exposed the prison's chaotic conditions and the authorities' failure to protect detainees.
Evin Prison has become a symbol of the Islamic Republic's apparatus of repression, silencing dissent through fear, violence, and psychological terror. Often likened to 'Iran's Bastille,' it holds a special place in the political imagination of many Iranians, symbolizing the Islamic Republic's absolutist rule and intolerance of dissent. People have been detained in Evin Prison for reasons including political dissent, activism, alleged espionage, and religious beliefs, particularly those of religious minorities like the Baháʼí community and Christian converts. Several foreign nationals, including journalists such as Italian reporter Cecilia Sala, have been detained at Evin, often used as political leverage in Iran's international negotiations.
Evin Prison has been repeatedly condemned by international organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the UN Special Rapporteur, and Iranian human rights groups for the atrocities committed within its walls.
On 23 June 2025, Israeli airstrikes targeted the prison. According to Iranian media, activists and human rights groups, among the dead and injured were family members of prisoners, social workers, a lawyer, doctors and nurses, a 5-year-old child, teenage soldiers guarding the doors as part of their compulsory military service, administrative staff and residents of the area. The deaths of five prisoners who had been convicted of financial crimes and the escape of an "insignificant number of inmates" was later confirmed. The attack was the deadliest in the conflict. Surviving political prisoners were transferred to other prisons.
Location and description
Evin Prison is located in Tehran, Iran, in a residential and commercial area known as Evin, next to the Saadat Abad district. A large park area with a popular upscale teahouse and restaurant is immediately next to it. Photography in front of and around the prison is forbidden. It is on the edge of District 3.
The place is located at the foot of the Alborz mountains on the land that was the former home of Ziaeddin Tabatabaee, who briefly served as prime minister in the 1920s. Prisoners from Evin and Ghezel Hesar prison are to be transferred eventually to the Central Prison of Tehran, also known as Fashafaviye or Fashafoyeh.
The prison grounds include an execution yard, a courtroom, and separate blocks for common criminals and female inmates.
History
Pre-1979
Evin Prison was constructed in 1972 under the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before the 1979 Islamic Revolution that installed the Islamic theocracy. However, as noted by The Atlantic, since then "it has become a symbol of the Islamic Republic's absolutist rule and intolerance of any dissent".
Evin was originally operated by the Shah's security and intelligence service, SAVAK. It was initially designed to house 320 inmates—20 in solitary cells and 300 in two large communal blocks—and was expanded to hold more than 1,500 prisoners, including 100 solitary cells for political prisoners, by 1977. Notable prisoners at Evin before the 1979 revolution include Ayatollah Mahmoud Taleghani and Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri. On 11 February 1979, during the Iranian Revolution, crowds of rebels stormed the prison and freed all the inmates.
1970s–1990s
After Iran became a republic, the prison population was again expanded, to 15,000 inmates. According to scholar Ervand Abrahamian: "In theory, Evin was a detention center for those awaiting trial", after which the prisoners would be transferred to another prison, either Qezel Hesar or Gohardasht Prison. "In reality, Evin served as a regular prison, as many waited years before being brought to trial". Prominent prisoners often served their entire sentences in Evin. Executions were carried out at Evin.
Following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Mohammad Kachouyi was made warden of Evin. After Kachouyi's assassination in June 1981, Asadollah Lajevardi, the chief prosecutor of Tehran, served as warden until 1985. In 1998, the People's Mujahedin of Iran assassinated Lajevardi.Ebadi, Iran Awakening, (Random House New York, 2006), p. 91
A prisoner held after the Islamic revolution was Marina Nemat, who spent two years in Evin starting in 1982 for participating in anti-regime protests at her school. She has written about her torture and the death of her fellow students at the prison. In her 2013 memoir, Face to Face with the Beast: Iranian Women in Mullahs' Prisons, the former Iranian nurse Hengameh Haj Hassan wrote about her incarceration in Evin prison in 1981, after being arrested for suspected connections with the Mojahedin. She described a system in which female inmates were frequently and systematically tortured by members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, mostly by being beaten on the soles of their feet with cables. She also describes mass executions: "In Unit 209, every day about 6.00pm, at dinner time, we heard an enormous and deafening noise, like a lorry shedding a heavy load of metal... It was the discharge of tens of firearms being fired at once on our friends".
Iran's judicial system is based on Islamic law (sharia). The system is supervised by the Minister of Justice and the chief public prosecutor, appointed by the Supreme Leader.
2000s
Political prisoners of note held at Evin have included Akbar Ganji (held there from 2000 to 2006), Mohsen Sazegara (in 2003), Nasser Zarafshan, Hamid Pourmand (2005–06), Dariush Zahedi, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, on charges of espionage (2003), subsequently acquitted in 2004, and Ramin Jahanbegloo (2006).
On 23 June 2003, Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was arrested for taking photographs in front of the prison, and died of blunt trauma to the head while imprisoned. The Iranian government said that she died from a stroke while being interrogated. Doctors examining Kazemi's body found evidence of rape, torture, and a skull fracture.Indepth: Zahra Kazemi CBC News Online | Updated 16 November 2005 Retrieved 25/09/07Impunity in Iran: Death of Photojournalist Zahra Kazemi from the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center
At dawn on 27 July 2008, the Iranian government hanged 29 people at Evin Prison. Sunday 27 July 2008
Iranian music producer and composer Hangi Tavakoli was held in a solitary cell in Section 209 from December 2008 to February 2009 for the crime of "Action Against National Security" because of some of the music he had written and produced, which the Iranian government labeled "Brainwashing Against the Government". He was sentenced to death by hanging, but due to human rights campaigns initiated by the public, the Iranian Justice System reduced his sentence to 3 months imprisonment and a US$100,000 penalty, conditional upon totally ceasing all his musical activities. Tavakoli continues his work outside Iran, a renowned record producer.
Esha Momeni, a student at the California State University, Northridge in Iran to visit family and research women's rights in the country was arrested on 15 October 2008 for crimes against national security, and held at Evin. She was released on 11 November 2008.
On 17 November 2008, Ali Ashtari, a computer wholesaler who provided intelligence about Iran's nuclear facilities to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was hanged at Evin Prison after being convicted in June 2008.Bamford, James. "The Secret War." Wired. 12 June 2013. "2. Retrieved on 14 June 2013. In late November 2008, journalist / blogger Hossein Derakhshan was held at Evin after his arrest in November 2008, accused of spying for Israel, and sentenced to 19½ years in prison on 28 September 2010.
Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist, was arrested in January 2009 for reporting without press credentials, with a charge of espionage added in April. She was held in the Evin Prison until her release in May 2009.
French student Clotilde Reiss stood trial in August 2009.
Over the years, Iranian converts to Christianity have been detained. On 5 March 2009, Marzieh Amirizadeh Esmaeilabad and Maryam Rustampoor were arrested by Iranian security forces and labeled "anti-government activists". The women were held at Evin Prison. On 18 November 2009, they were released without bail, but the charges were not dropped. In May 2010, Maryam and Marzieh were cleared of all charges.
Three Belgian tourists, Vincent Boon-Falleur, Idesbald Van den Bosch, and Diego Mathieu, were detained in Evin Prison for three months in 2009. Van den Bosch and Boon-Falleur were arrested on 5 September 2009 for entering an unmarked Iranian Military Zone near Semnan. They were detained in Semnan for three days, then transferred to Evin. Mathieu was arrested on 16 September at the Iran-Turkmenistan border because the three had met on 4 September and exchanged phone numbers. The three were accused of spying and detained for three months, from 8 September to 8 December 2009, in Section 209 of Evin, initially in solitary confinement and then in four-person cells with Iranian prisoners. They were released thanks to Belgian diplomatic negotiations.
Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari, in Iran to cover the 2009 Iran presidential election, was imprisoned in Evin for 118 days. Bahari documented his time at Evin in his memoir, titled Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival, which was published by Random House in 2011. The memoir is the basis of the film Rosewater, which was written and directed by former The Daily Show host Jon Stewart. The film's title is the nickname Bahari gave his interrogator/torturer at Evin due to his cologne.
Three long-time Middle-Eastern residents, Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal, and Sarah Shourd, who were on holiday in Iraqi Kurdistan and were detained by Iran, were held in Evin Prison since the beginning of August 2009. Shourd was kept in solitary confinement."Mothers continue fight for release of Iran hikers" , by The World, 20 July 2010. Retrieved 2010-07-20. The Washington Post reported that they "were arrested in July by Iranian border guards while hiking in the mountainous Kurdish region between Iraq and Iran. Their families say they crossed the border accidentally, but a top Iranian prosecutor last month accused the three of spying." In December 2009, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the three would be put on trial, in a move that coincided with other points of contention between the two countries."Iran intends to go forward with espionage trial of 3 Americans: Move comes week after release demand directed at U.S.", by Kay Armin Serjoie, Thomas Erdbrink and William Branigin, The Washington Post, 15 December 2009. Retrieved 2010-07-20. Sarah Shourd was freed on bail on 14 September 2010. Two days earlier, the three Americans had been charged with espionage by Iranian prosecutors. Bauer and Fattal were released in September 2011.