A room in Evin prison’s medical clinic showing significant damage after the June 23 Israeli strikes, raising healthcare concerns for the hundreds of prisoners whom authorities returned to Evin on August 8. Photo taken on July 1, 2025. © 2025 Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via AP

Disclose Whereabouts of Forcibly ‘Disappeared;’ Free those Held Unjustly

Human Rights Watch

Iranian authorities have ill-treated and forcibly disappeared Evin prison detainees who survived the June 23, 2025 attack by Israeli forces, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also found the Israeli strikes on the prison to be an apparent war crime.

Despite repeated calls and pleas by prisoners and their families, Iranian authorities failed to take any measures to protect detainees’ lives and safety prior to the attack. In the aftermath, the authorities have ill-treated survivors during transfers to other prisons, as well as when returning prisoners back to Evin, and held them in cruel and unsafe conditions. The treatment of prisoners in the attack’s aftermath bears all the hallmarks of Iranian authorities’ extensive use of repression, in particular during times of crisis.

“Iranian authorities’ response to traumatized Evin prisoners who had just witnessed fellow inmates killed and injured during the June 23 Israeli attack was to abuse them,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Iranian authorities have committed a catalogue of violations against prisoners in the aftermath of the attack, including beatings, insults, and threats during transfers, and holding prisoners in appalling conditions that have endangered their lives and health. Death-row inmates and those forcibly disappeared are now at heightened risk of torture or execution.”

Between June 24 and July 29, Human Rights Watch interviewed and spoke with 23 family members of prisoners, formerly detained human rights defenders, and other informed sources in connection with the June 23 Israeli attack on Evin prison and Iranian authorities’ subsequent treatment of prisoners. Researchers also reviewed accounts of prisoners’ treatment, obtained by other human rights groups and shared with Human Rights Watch, and publicly available accounts from prisoners and their families.

Human Rights Watch wrote to Iranian authorities seeking information about the fate and whereabouts of detainees, particularly those held in detention facilities run by the Ministry of Intelligence and the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The authorities have not responded.

According to prisoners’ accounts, security forces were deployed to Evin prison wards, including Wards 4 and 8, where many male political prisoners are held, shortly after the attack. They ordered prisoners to leave at gunpoint, with little or no time to pack their belongings. The security forces shackled male prisoners in pairs and marched them into buses for hours-long journeys, insulting the prisoners and pointing weapons at them.

The transfer of hundreds of male prisoners back to Evin prison in the early hours of August 8, 46 days after the attack, was similarly marked by violence. Based on information obtained by Human Rights Watch, security forces subjected several political prisoners to beatings with batons and electric shock weapons because they protested being handcuffed, as well as protesting the transfer of death-row inmates to separate detention facilities.

In the aftermath of the attack, the authorities transferred the prisoners to two main detention facilities in Tehran province: Shahr-e Rey prison, known as Qarchak prison, for women and the Great Tehran Central Penitentiary, known as Fashafouyeh prison, for men. The authorities have not revealed information about the fate and whereabouts of some detainees held by security and intelligence bodies, including dissidents, human rights activists, and dual and foreign nationals. In some cases, authorities have only allowed detainees to make a brief call to their family only to inform them that they were held in solitary cells, sometimes in unknown locations.

On June 23, the authorities transferred an arbitrarily detained Swedish-Iranian doctor, Ahmadreza Djalali, who is at imminent risk of execution, to an unknown location. As of August 9, authorities had, when asked, refused to disclose any information about his fate and whereabouts, thus subjecting him to an enforced disappearance.

Enforced disappearances are grave crimes under international law and are considered ongoingso long as the fate of those disappeared remains unacknowledged and their whereabouts unknown.

The authorities’ refusal to disclose the fate and whereabouts of detainees and some prisoners has also heightened fears for transgender prisoners held in Evin prison’s quarantine section. A transgender woman formerly held in the quarantine section of Evin told Human Rights Watch that many transgender prisoners “have nobody” and are estranged from families “who shun them.” She expressed concerns that, “even if they are hurt or dead, no one would know as their families might not even be aware that they were there.”

Fears of imminent executions have also grown for six other death-row prisoners. Vahid Bani Amerian, Pouya Ghobadi, Akbar “Shahrokh” Daneshvarkar, Babak Alipour, and Mohammad Taghavi Sangdehi were separated from other prisoners during the August 8 transfer and reportedly moved to Ghezel Hesar prison in Alborz province, where people on death row are routinely moved in advance of executions. Another man, Babak Shahbazi, was transferred to Ghezel Hesar prison earlier in the week.

Families of prisoners in both Qarchak and Fashafouyeh prisons described to Human Rights Watch abysmal prison conditions, such as poorly ventilated, filthy, and overcrowded rooms with many prisoners forced to sleep on the floor; as well as a lack of access to clean, potable water and adequate facilities to maintain personal hygiene. These conditions place detainees’ lives and health at risk.

Political prisoners in Qarchak prison are held in the quarantine section, where they have been told that they would remain indefinitely. A human rights defender formerly held there told Human Rights Watch that the quarantine section is the prison’s worst part, designed for temporary detention of new detainees, with walls stained with vomit and feces. Another human rights defender formerly held there said that the prison is “unfit, even for animals.”

A relative of an imprisoned human rights defender told Human Rights Watch that Fashafouyeh prison had severe insect infestation and that their imprisoned loved one had picked six or seven bedbugs from his sheets in one morning alone. A family member of another political prisoner said that prisoners’ bodies were covered in insect bites  >>>