“I’ve spent time in Evin, Iran’s most notorious prison, the one Israel bombed on Monday,” writes a reporter for Iran International’s Tehran Insider section (Evin prison was meant to fall not by bombs but the people’s will). “Half a dozen of my closest friends have been there too. Do we want it flattened, turned into a park? Yes. Are we pleased it was bombed? No.”
“How, exactly, does bombing a prison free a nation?” she continues, noting, “Ruins attract new bosses, not playgrounds. That is not the future we fought for when we risked everything to challenge the regime.”
A video obtained by Iran International shows a series of explosions rocking Tehran. pic.twitter.com/vigRTzSuT4
— Iran International English (@IranIntl_En) June 23, 2025
At least sixteen people, including staff members at Tehran’s Evin Prison, were killed Monday when Israeli airstrikes hit the prison complex and other facilities tied to the Islamic Republic’s security apparatus, sources told Iran International.
????LEAKED
Hackers have released horrifying CCTV footage of innocent Iranian political prisoners being tortured at Iran’s Evin Prison.
This is what the “anti-war” and progressive left support when they say they “stand with Iran” and support the evil Islamic Cleric Khamenei. pic.twitter.com/M4KVwApGPU
— Goldie Ghamari, JD | گلسا قمری (@gghamari) June 23, 2025
Among the dead were Vahid Heidarpour and Rouhollah Tavassoli, officials who had overseen wards 4, 7, and 8 at various times. Both were known for their roles in managing inmates held on financial and political charges, according to the sources.
“They had a reputation for exploiting detainees linked to powerful networks,” a source familiar with Evin Prison told Iran International.
Iranians approach Evin Prison to search for their loved ones.
Some of those imprisoned in Evin are young girls who were kidnapped, never received a trial, and haven’t been heard from for months for protesting hijab laws.
— The Persian Jewess (@persianjewess) June 23, 2025
Vahid Heidarpour and Rouhollah Tavassoli were killed in the administrative wing of the facility, where they had been meeting with the deputy health chief and several guards at the time of the strike. There were no reported casualties among inmates.
“I saw 16 prison employees in body bags being loaded into ambulances,” one witness inside the prison recounted. “They plan to move political detainees to Fashafuyeh or to Saheli Prison in Qom. The death toll is high. No debris has been cleared yet. Many soldiers were also killed, and female staff are among the dead.”
Eyewitnesses reported that at least 20 buses were used on Monday to transfer inmates from Evin to Fashafuyeh Prison.
Evin Prison is the most feared regime political prison in Iran. The site of notorious torture of countless human rights activists.
Israel just blew open the gates to the prison. Not a single person can say this is not justified pic.twitter.com/aPMKzH89Rv
— Drew Pavlou ???????????????????????? (@DrewPavlou) June 23, 2025
The Tehran Insider shares:
“Concerned, broadly well-meaning Iranians watching from London or LA are far more likely to cheer. They don’t hear the explosions rattling our walls. They don’t see the plumes or the pale, crumpled faces—our neighbors, our parents, our children—shaking in silence.
“I try not to block those who infuriate me with their aloofness, their crass humor. They’re a product of the Islamic Republic too—desensitized by a daily flood of suffering from Kyiv to Gaza, stripped of empathy by proximity to too much pain.
“I try not to block them because we need each other, as many as we can if we’re to survive this and not fall into the abyss.
“I am exhausted, furious, with this regime as anyone. I despise the system that robbed me of my life with empty slogans, the man who telegraphs defiance from a bunker under my city.
“But this is not deliverance.”
