Two days before a fire engulfed part of Iran’s Evin prison, killing at least eight people, a unit of riot police was deployed to the scene and began patrolling the halls, chanting “God is Greatest” and banging on cell doors with batons hit, six sources told Portal.
The patrols began without any apparent provocation by the inmates, the sources said. They continued Thursday through Saturday, when some prisoners responded and called for the ouster of the Islamic Revolution’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We heard gunshots and inmates shouting ‘Death Khamenei,'” said a prisoner held in the part of the prison where prisoners convicted of financial crimes are held. This prisoner, who was testifying for the first time, made his statements to Portal on condition that his name would not be identified and that no details of the means of communication he used would be disclosed.
The riots at Evin prison come after nearly a month of protests across Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman arrested by vice squads for indecent behavior. Interviews Portal was able to conduct with the prisoner, relatives of another prisoner and four human rights defenders suggest that the anti-government slogans chanted by prisoners began in response to prison patrols and that police used violence to put an end to it. The sources polled by Portal spoke on condition of anonymity due to concerns about their safety. Portal was unable to determine why riot police were dispatched to the prison, what the government’s reasons for deciding how to proceed, or how the fire started. Evin Prison, located in the foothills of the mountains north of Tehran, houses both civil and political prisoners.