Fire And Clashes At Iran's Evin Prison Amid Mahsa Amini Protests

A fire and clashes erupted at Tehran's notorious Evin prison Saturday night as the protest movement sparked by Mahsa Amini's death in custody entered a fifth week.

A fire and clashes erupted at Tehran's notorious Evin prison on Saturday night as the protest movement that erupted after Mehsa Amini's death in custody entered a fifth week.

The facility in northern Tehran is notorious for abusing political prisoners and also holds foreign detainees.

Hundreds of people arrested during the demonstrations over Amini's death were reportedly sent there.

Flames and a column of smoke could be seen rising in the night sky and the sound of what appeared to be gunfire could be heard in a video that the Oslo-based Iranian Human Rights Organization shared on Twitter.

"A fire is spreading in Evin Prison" and an "explosion" was heard from the facility, 1500tasvir channel on social media that monitors protests and police abuses said on Twitter.

Chants of "Death to the Dictator" -

One of the main slogans of the month-long protest movement that erupted in protest of Amini's death -

It can be heard in the background of the video.

Amini, 22, died on September 16, three days after falling into a coma after being arrested by Iran's notorious morality police for an alleged violation of the Islamic Republic's strict dress code for women.

Iranian state media, citing a senior security official,

He said that "trouble and clashes occurred on Saturday night" in the facility and that "rioters" started a fire.

"The situation is now completely under control," the Iranian news agency said, noting at least eight wounded.

Families worry

Evin Prison holds foreign prisoners, including French.

Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah and US citizen Siamak Namazi, whose family said he was returned to custody this week after provisional release.

In response to the news of the fire, Namazi's family said in a statement to AFP shared by their lawyer that they were "extremely concerned" and had not heard from him.

They urged the Iranian authorities to give him "immediate" means to contact his family and release him "because he is clearly not safe in Evin Prison".

The sister of another US citizen who is being held in Evin, businessman Imad Sharqi, said his family was "drugged and anxious" in a Twitter post.

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Iranian dissident-winning director Jaafar Panahi and reformist politician Mostafa Tajzadeh are also reported to be detained in Evin.

"Shots are taking place while Evin burns," Roham Alvandi, associate professor at the London School of Economics, said on Twitter.

“If political prisoners perish, God forbid,

Then this would be an event on the scale of the Cinema Rex fire in Abadan in August 1978 which hastened the downfall of the Shah"

.

Cinema Rex Inferno, one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in history prior to September 11, 2001, sparked protests against the Shah's regime even though the responsibility was never clear.

Nearly 400 people were killed in an arson attack at a cinema, which closed on the eve of the 1979 Islamic revolution.

"The mullahs must be lost"

Angry protesters took to the streets again on Saturday despite the internet outage.

Young women have been at the forefront of the current wave of street protests,

The biggest that has been seen in the country in years.

"Weapons, tanks, fireworks, the mullahs must be lost," chanted women without headscarves at a gathering at Tehran's Shariati Technical and Vocational College, in a video clip widely circulated online.

Dozens of protesters mocking them whistled projectiles at security forces near a historic roundabout in the city of Hamedan, west of Tehran, in a video clip verified by AFP.

Despite what internet monitor NetBlocks described as a "significant disruption to internet traffic", protesters were seen streaming through the streets of the northwestern city of Ardabil,

In videos shared on Twitter.

1,500 Tasvir said that shop owners went on strike in Amini's hometown, Saqqaz, in the Kurdistan region, and Mahabad in western Azerbaijan.

There was a call for a large turnout of protests on Saturday under the slogan "The Beginning of the End!"

"We have to be present in the squares,

Because the best VPN these days is the street,” activists declared, referring to VPNs used to get around internet restrictions.

'Riots'

At least 108 people were killed in the Amini protests, and at least 93 others were killed in separate clashes in Zahedan, the capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

According to the Oslo-based Iranian Human Rights Group.

The unrest continued despite what Amnesty International described as a "brutal and relentless crackdown" that included "an all-out attack on child protesters."

- Resulting in the killing of at least 23 minors.

The official Iranian news agency IRNA reported that a leader of the Revolutionary Guard announced Saturday that three members of his Basij militia had been killed and 850 wounded in Tehran since the "sedition" began.

The crackdown drew international condemnation and sanctions against Iran from Britain, Canada and the United States.

European Union countries agreed this week to impose new sanctions, and the move is due to be endorsed at the bloc's foreign ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday.

BY
ProBuzzFeed