Inside Iran’s hellish Evin jail where British couple face 10 years of torture
For the next 10 years, Lindsay and Craig Foreman may call one of Iran’s most notorious prisons home.
The British couple were jailed today over allegations of espionage after being arrested last year during an around-the-world motorcycle journey.
They’re currently held in Evin prison, a detention facility in Tehran where dissidents and political prisoners are held.
Human rights campaigners have long viewed the jail as a symbol of the iron-fisted rule of the Islamic Republic.
The Foremans, who deny all wrongdoing, have described being holed up in eight-foot cells with nothing more than a hole in the floor and a sink.
Here’s what to know about the prison.
What is Evin prison?
The compound, opened in 1971, sits on the picturesque slopes of the Alborz Mountain in northern Tehran.
Within a few years, the institution gained a reputation for the conditions prisoners face inside.
In 1988, thousands of prisoners were executed after cursory trials in what the Human Rights Watch called the ‘darkest period in Evin’s history’.
Inmates include opposition politicians campaigner’s journalists, lawyers and even students, with concrete walls, electrified barbed-wire fences and a minefield between them and the outside world.
Citizens of foreign countries and dual citizens have routinely been placed in Evin, such as French nationals Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris.
The pair, who were imprisoned on charges of spying for France and Israel, were held for three years before being freed last year.
These years-long prison sentences have led to the UK and the US accusing Iran of using foreign nationals as political bargaining chips.
Also among them are the protesters who took to the streets in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman arrested by the country’s so-called morality police.
During the unrest, a fire broke out at Evin amid clashes between prisoners who had been staging sit-ins and chanting anti-government slogans.
Although Amnesty International said the fire was used as a justification for the bloody crackdown that followed at the hands of prison guards.
Israel targeted Evin prison last year, killing 79 people and wounding dozens, including prison guards, prisoners and visiting family members.
At least six projectiles damaged 28 buildings, reducing stretches to piles of debris and mangled metal beams. Human Rights Watch said this amounted to a war crime.
What are conditions like at the prison?
Harsh treatment and abuse are widespread, according to former prisoners.
They say they have gruelling interrogations, torture, rape, psychological humiliation and solitary confinement.
Some ex-inmates say they endured hours-long interrogations while blindfolded and the lights were constantly on in their cells to stop them from sleeping.
All they could hear were the cries from the other cells or the barks from prison guards threatening their families.
Bed bugs, cockroaches and rats are said to scuttle through the feet of the sometimes dozens of people housed in halls with just four rooms.
That includes Craig, who said he spent 57 days in confinement, which ’emotionally and physically’ broke him.
Lindsay told the BBC that she has spends her days running ‘in circles’ in the prison’s cramped yard.
She told the broadcaster: ‘I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my physical health might not be what it was when I came in but I can regain it when I leave…
‘I’m surrounded by people who are in worse situations who have to live this their entire life, so in some way I feel lucky that I’ve had the life I have until this point – and hopefully one day for me it will end.’
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