Iran offers rare look inside feared prison (I don't know whether to LOL or add a Barf Alert)

At a cellblock inside Iran's most feared prison, women weave carpets and watch World Cup soccer while their children scamper around at their feet. Inmates take seminars on reading, writing and tailoring suits, and on how to avoid AIDS.

Iran opened the doors to its infamous Evin prison Tuesday, offering the international media their first glimpse inside the compound from which stories have emerged of torture, forced confessions and floggings — dating from before the 1979 Islamic revolution up to the present day. The facility is among those Amnesty International has criticized for abysmal conditions and holding political prisoners without charges.

But Iranian officials boasted Tuesday of the prison's amenities and care for human rights.

"We have nothing to hide from the world," prison official Sohrab Soleimani said. "We invited you here to see for yourself how prisoners are treated and what facilities they enjoy," he told reporters.

More than 30 reporters and cameramen roamed the prison's passageways and freely interviewed inmates. Authorities showed off part of the facility that houses female inmates but barred journalists from viewing men's cellblocks or political prisoners, citing lack of time and promising greater access in the future.

At the prison's hospital, female inmates — mostly young women jailed for illegal sexual relationships — were attending classes on HIV infection and how to avoid the deadly virus.

The only male prisoners reporters saw Tuesday were in the prison's kitchen, where they were preparing food for fellow inmates.

"This is like work outside jail — I have no feeling that I'm a prisoner," said Ebrahim Hasani, jailed for refusing to pay alimony to his wife.

"We enjoy good facilities here — I have no objection," said Shokat Darabi, a female inmate incarcerated for carrying heroin.

Many female inmates said they were happy with general conditions in the prison, but complained about Iran's judicial process.

"I cannot get a lawyer because I can't afford the expenses ... and the judge refuses to free me on parole," said Mahbobeh Asadi, who has been in jail for six months on charges of illegal sex.

Iranian Justice Minister Jamal Karimirad told reporters Tuesday that prisoners were given access to a lawyer, and said the judiciary would assign one if inmates cannot afford to pay.

Other prisoners complained that they were jailed for political, not criminal, reasons.

"I'm in jail on charges of disturbing public opinion," said a nervous Nasrin Najmoddin, author of a book she described as rejecting Iranian clerics' hard-line interpretation of Islam.

Evin has been the notorious home to dissidents since before Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. It was founded by SAVAK, the secret service of the U.S.-allied Iranian ruler Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In recent years, it has again collected a star-studded list of political detainees, among them Ramin Jahanbegloo — a prominent academic and author of some 20 books, and who heads the office of contemporary studies at the private Cultural Research Bureau in Tehran. Detained at a Tehran airport in April, he is being held without official charges, legal representation or family visits, according to human rights groups.

Another high-profile Evin inmate was Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, arrested in 2003 for taking photos in front of the prison. She died in detention months later of a fractured skull and brain hemorrhage. In November, an appeals court upheld the acquittal of an Iranian intelligence agent and ruled Kazemi's death was not premeditated.

Evin used to house many political prisoners in solitary confinement, in cells prison officials likened to well-equipped hotel rooms. But inmates who spent months there disputed that description.

"I was held in a 2-square-yard cell with no access to radio, television or newspapers," said Taqi Rahmani, 46, a leading writer and political dissident who has been in and out of Evin since 1981, on vague charges of seeking to overthrow the ruling Islamic establishment.

"I was simply under psychological torture to give up my political views," he said.

Officials said they opened the prison to media Tuesday to dispel myths about human rights violations.

"We have a very appropriate standing in terms of observing human rights," Karimirad said at a rare press conference inside the prison walls.

But last year, Iran's judiciary released an unprecedented report acknowledging widespread human rights violations in prisons — including the use of torture and solitary confinement.

It also confirmed that prison guards and officials in detention centers have ignored a legal order banning torture, and said police have made many arrests without sufficient evidence and held suspects in undeclared detention centers.

In 2004, Iran's judiciary chief, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, ordered a ban on the use of torture for obtaining confessions — a move widely seen as the first public acknowledgment of the practice of torture in Iran.

Karimirad said police detained 70 people, most of them women, at a women's rights demonstration Monday but said many of them would be released soon.

At least one young woman was injured when police, using batons and shields, dispersed the crowd in a downtown Tehran square.

When asked if police were right to beat female protesters, Karimirad said, "No. They have no right to beat anyone. This should be investigated."

Excerpt from the link I posted: (It gets worse after this)

"The panorama of Evin serves for Melli University a function beyond what the site of the Namaz-e Jom'eh (Friday Prayer) serves for Tehran University. Shortly after the revolution, the soccer field at Tehran University was paved over and turned into the stage for the Friday Prayer. The area is wire-fenced in, facing a painted blue and green and yellow pulpit - a vague landscape of a sky and a sun - displaying a large photograph of Khomeini and smaller ones of the "martyred" Ayatollah Beheshti and Khomeini's then heir Ayatollah Montazeri. Before the mid-day prayer, a semi-automatic-toting preacher high in the power hierarchy - the President, the Speaker of the Parliament, the Prosecutor General, or the like - delivers a sermon or two that set the tone for the social and political atmosphere of the week to follow.

Modeled after the early Islamic display of Moslem unity and power, the Namaz-e Jom'eh in Tehran is a resurrected ritual that in the age of mass-media has increasingly been turned into a spectacle. From dawn each Friday, the streets surrounding the university area are closed off to traffic while thousands of men, women, and children - the umma of Hezbollah - are bused in and arranged in sections and rows designated by special rulings that are regularly repainted on the streets.

The televised broadcast of the image of the umma in prostration, then on their feet, on cue, stringing a series of "Death to..." slogans and shaking clenched fists into the camera, often finds its way into many a faraway living room. By late afternoon, buses transporting the last groups of women - drenched with sweat underneath their heavy veilings and carrying heat-struck small children - vacate the area, leaving the neighborhood to enjoy a brief respite after hours of blasting speeches and screeching microphones, and before the return of the noise and fumes of the usual traffic. On weekdays, the special rulings on the streets - signifiers of the farcical and violence-infused Namaz-e Jom'eh - blend with unobserved traffic signals into the gridlock of an even larger organization of ignored signs.

The impact of Evin, on the other hand, is that of a referent. The panorama of Evin is not meant to symbolize; and, while accessible to a live audience, the still-life vista is not meant for video cameras.

Two main buildings comprise the prison compound of Evin Prison. A red brick building that was operational under the Shah was "liberated" Bastille-style in 1979, with the intention, people now recall almost with amusement at their own naiveté, of turning it into a museum. Next to it stands a yellowing cement construction about three times larger in size, whose foundation was laid before the revolution and has been speedily completed by the Islamic Republic >>> Photos

The interior architecture of these buildings is impossible to reconstruct from descriptions. Visitors and prisoners are blindfolded as they are taken inside the buildings or moved about. Those prisoners who are allowed to visit with their families for ten minutes every 45 days across Plexiglas and through telephones, are led to the visiting room in a row, blindfolded, holding on to each others' hands, a rope, or corners of each others' veils. Visitors are screened at an office located in an amusement park ("Luna Park") across the highway from the main area of the prisons, where in the evenings children are treated to their meager, wartime ration of recreation"

And from another part:

"During her time at Qezel Hesar, the head of the prison was a man known by the customary title of Haji who has since been dismissed, allegedly on account of his unusually cruel ways but possibly because of factional differences. The pride of his establishment was one infamous Unit One, nicknamed The Coffin (Tabut), which was a large room divided by waist-high wood planks into a number of "coffins." Prisoners were confined to these structures, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs, sitting upright without back support and with their legs stretched in front of them -- sometimes for months at a time.

The idea was to devise a method for prolonged torture that minimized the chance of death and loss of urgently sought information, and did not leave physical scars. The silence of the room was periodically broken by a fit of crying, or a prisoner standing up in her coffin, after which she would be taken away to "write." She would be given a supply of paper and left alone to put down the entire content of her memory, relevant and irrelevant to her accusations, until she became empty.

Haji was known to bring in a bouquet of flowers every now and then and declare: "I am holding fresh flowers from the garden outside. Would anyone like to smell the flowers?" He would even sometimes bring in his newborn son and ask: "Would anyone like to hold a baby...?" He would urge: "Come on girls, stand up, speak up, look what you're missing." And often the prisoners who did smell the flowers or touched the baby would "stand" and "write." M never experienced Unit One. Soon after her transfer to Qezel-Hesar her health began to deteriorate, her energy dwindle, and she broke no more rules. Unbeknownst to her she was serving the final months of her jail term and within four months she was returned to Evin and then released."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.