A photo clearly showing a fire in Evin prison in Tehran. Oct. 15, 2022
A large fire spread in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison Saturday evening as gunshots and blasts were heard, with hundreds of political prisoners among the inmates.
Center for Human Rights in Iran said that it received reports of a “gun battle” in Evin prison Saturday night that was continuing at 22:00 local time (14:30 Washington DC time and 19:30 London time).
The human rights monitoring group said that gun shots were first heard in Ward 7 of the prison, housing inmates convicted for financial crimes, and then the confrontation spread to other parts of the prison.
At this early stage, this information cannot be verified and it is not clear who was firing weapons inside the prison.
The Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard quoted a judicial official after midnight that a riot had started in the wards where common criminals are kept and sections holding political prisoners are separate. However, images showed a huge blaze engulfing most of the compound. The official also claimed that the incident was not related to ongoing protests in the country and calm had returned to Evin at around midnight.
These statements also can not be independently verified until perhaps Sunday when human rights monitors and other credible sources provide more concrete information.
A video tweeted from Tehran appears to show that some objects are lobbed at the prison from a distance and once they land explosion take place. If security forces were firing tear gas or another device at the compound, that can explain why the blaze spread quickly. Here is that video:
Special Police anti-riot forces heading to Evin at around 22:oo local time
Fars new agency also affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard confirmed after 22:00 local time that "a riot" took place in the prison by "common criminals" who got into an skirmish with guards and set the clothing depot of the prison on fire. Fars claimed that order has been reestablished and firefighters are extinguishing the blaze. However, eyewitnesses continues to report explosions and gunfire in the compound.
The anonymous group organizing the recent protests, called Tehran Youth, issued a statement calling on people to surround the Evin compound and not allow government forces to enter "to prevent a human tragedy."
This video shows the large blaze and explosion can be heard.
An interesting observation by some Tehran residents noted that the government opened access to the Internet and a few minutes later the news about Evin prison spread.
Photos and videos showed a large blaze in the compound and some reports said that guards at the observation towers had fled the prison amid the spreading fire. However, some guards must still be in the prison if guns are being fired.
Videos show ordinary people who heard about the incident have been trying to reach the prison, possibly in a bid to help the inmates. One video showed a large traffic jam of cars honking as they tried to reach Evin. Iran International learned that security forces fired tear gas at cars approaching Evin. Apparently one tear gas cylinder hit a car and set it ablaze.
People around the prison said special riot police have been firing tear gas both inside the prison at inmates who broken out of the buildings and also the crowd gathered outside.
The crowd outside were chanting "Death to the dictator".
An eyewitness says the explosions were so huge that the blast waves broke the windows of nearby houses.
One emergency worker at the scene told the official government news agency IRNA that no one had died but there were at least eight people injured. However, with multiple sounds of explosions and a huge blaze, it is hard to believe that an emergency crew member would have full information at this stage.
Amid nationwide protests that have even mobilized Iranian high school students, the Islamic Republic authorities are removing photos of the Supreme Leader in fear of being torn or damaged.
According to an article in Ham-Mihan daily on Saturday, school principles were ordered to remove Ali Khamenei’s portraits, and the pictures of the founder of the Islamic Republic Ruhollah Khomeini, hanging in classrooms in all the schools in Iran.
The decision was made after numerous videos surfaced on social media showing students tearing down the photos or replacing them with antigovernment slogans or photos of Mahsa Amini, the 22-year-old woman whose death in the custody of hijab police sparked the current uprising against the clerical regime.
According to the report, Basij paramilitary forces have assumed a more active role in the management of schools, and many principals have been summoned or fired due to their lack of harsh reactions to protesting students.
Outraged by government violence against schoolgirls, people in the northwestern city of Ardabil took to streets on Saturday to protest violence by security forces against their children.
Based on information received by Iran International, school officials tried to force the students to sing a song, “Hello Commander” in praise of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei. Some students refused and then government agents showed up, beating and assaulting the girls. One student reportedly died of her injuries, and another one is hospitalized in critical condition, with reports of several arrests.
US Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley has expressed concern about the use of live ammunition by the Islamic Republic’s security forces against the protesters across the country.
In a tweet on Saturday, Malley said, “Sadly, but unsurprisingly, Iran’s government continues to fire on peaceful protestors rather than listening to them.”
Referring to a meeting civil society activists on women’s rights in Iran on Friday, he said that “We had a valuable conversation with human rights activists on the situation in Iran and steps the US can take to support its people’s fundamental rights.”
US President Joe Biden and his top officials in a flurry of meetings and statements on Friday pledged support to Iranians protesting for their basic rights as the protests are entering the second month since they started following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
Joe Biden, visiting a college in Irvine, California said he is “stunned” by the popular protests and that the US stands with Iran’s “brave women”.
Vice President Kamala Harris, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington DC also met separately with Iranian civil society activists based abroad, earlier in the day.
Three Iranian women led by Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born British actress and activist, met with Blinken and other State Department officials to discuss how the United States can support Iranians who have been protesting for more than four weeks.
As anger has risen among Iranians over an attack on students in a high school for girls this week, fresh nationwide protests began on Saturday around noon.
The government has shut off all mobile internet access since Saturday morning in anticipation of large demonstrations, especially in the northwest, among Azari-speaking Iranians who have been outraged by government violence against schoolgirls in Ardabil, with a majority of Azaris.
Based on information received by Iran International, school officials tried to force the students to sing a song, “Hello Commander” in praise of Iran’s ruler Ali Khamenei. Some students refused and then government agents showed up, beating and assaulting the girls. One student reportedly died of her injuries.
Unrest has continued every day, including Friday, with protests in several cities, but today’s protests are expected to be larger and more widespread.
Despite the Internet disruption in Iran, news and videos have started trickling out of the country and we follow the situation closely and will update readers throughout the day.
Below we posted news and videos as we received them and tried to verify their authenticity.
Our Live Coverage that began at 13:30 local time on Saturday, ended at 00:42 on Sunday.
Residents from Tehran's southern neighborhood of Nazi Abad are still out on the streets chanting antigovernment slogans, while many women who observe the Islamic dress code – or hijab – by choice are seen among the protesters.
The woman in this photo is carrying a banner vowing to get Iran back from the Islamic regime.
In some parts of the city Ahvaz people are still holding gatherings and chanting slogans against the Islamic Republic while a lot of people in their cars are expressing their support with long honks.
Local sources from the Khuzestan province have reported intense fighting between the agents of the regime and people in the oil-rich city of Masjedsoleyman and the city of Lali. Mobile internet networks in Khuzestan are shut down and landline internet is very weak.
In Hamedan, people are seen throwing stones at the security forces, a rare scene for the city whose citizens have usually been among the last to join the antigovernment protests during the past few years.
In the central city of Yazd, security forces are directly shooting at protesters while several neighborhoods of the city were covered by the teargas shot to disperse the protesters.
The Kurdish majority city of Kermanshah was also a scene of protests on Saturday night, with some reports that claimed the streets were in control of the demonstrators.
Videos coming from the city of Ardabil show desperate riot police forces who have resorted to every conceivable measure but are still unable to control the crowds of people, outraged over the death of a teenage girl who was killed a few days ago.
A small group of protesters chanting slogans in front of a shopping arcade in downtown Tehran. Social media reports say security forces and plainclothes agents are present in large numbers in all areas they suspect protests may erupt.
Hardliner news agencies publish video of an interview with the uncle of another young girl who was reportedly beaten to death by Basij militias inside her school in Ardabil Wednesday. He says she has died of a congenital heart condition at home.
Further footage from protests in Ardabil today shows riot police armoured vehicle trying to run over a protester and riot police police kicking the closed shutters of a shop.
Sporadic clashes are reported from Ardabil, where people are attacking security forces a day after after plainclothes forces killed a schoolgirl and injured several others in a raid on their high school. Iranian authorities have denied reports about the death of the student, identified as Asra Panahi, saying she died due to heart failure.
Students at Shariati Technical and Vocational College held a gathering, removed their compulsory head covers and chanted slogans, calling for others to join them.
Female students at Tehran’s University of Science and Culture have unveiled at the campus in defiance of warnings by the university's authorities, chanting slogans for freedom.
Students at Tehran’s Allameh Tabatabai University interrupted an address by one of the authorities of the university who was threatening students with expulsion and warning them against protests at the campus with boos and slogans.
Another video from Ardabil which shows protesters chanting "Down with the Dictator" where girls in a secondary school were beaten up and arrested for refusing to sing a government propaganda song on Wednesday.
Students at Tehran's Science and Technology University are chanting in support of protesters in Kordestan and Sistan and Baluchestan provinces where security forces have used the most violence and killed many.
People have taken to the street in Ardabil, capital of northwestern Ardabil province, where girls in the secondary school were beaten up for refusing to sing the government propaganda song on Wednesday. One of the girls reportedly died in hospital later.
Protesters are chasing the security forces and chanting "Scoundrels, Scoundrels" at them.
Former US President Barack Obama has admitted that he made "a mistake" by not supporting the Iranian people's 2009 Green Movement against the Islamic Republic.
Speaking during a podcast on Friday, he described the lack of public support for the 2009 protests as a missed opportunity to back the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, saying, "In retrospect, I think that was a mistake. Every time we see a flash, a glimmer of hope, of people longing for freedom, I think we have to point it out. We have to shine a spotlight on it. We have to express some solidarity about it.”
“There is deep dissatisfaction with the Iranian regime,” he said, adding that women in particular are chafing under a series of arbitrary and cruel discrimination exercised by the state in addition to the systematic subjugation of women, which has made them fed up and tired of the regime.
Obama said that whether the current uprising – ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini – “ends up bringing about fundamental change in the regime is hard to predict.”
He explained that back in 2009 and 2010, “there was a big debate inside the White House about whether I should publicly affirm what was going on with the Green Movement because a lot of the activists were being accused of being tools of the West, and there was some thought that we were somehow going to be undermining their street cred in Iran if I supported what they were doing.”
Obama noted that “our moral response to the incredible courage that is taking place in Iran and those women and girls who are on the streets knowing that they’re putting themselves in harm’s way to speak truth to power” is “to affirm what they do and hope that it brings about more space for the kind of civic conversation that over time can take that country down a better path.”
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has threatened to retaliate if the European Union imposes further sanctions on the country because of crackdown on protests.
In a phone call with Portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs João Gomes Cravinho, Amir-Abdollahian criticized the “interventionist” statements and measures by other countries, saying that they provoke people and instigate unrest in Iran.
He claimed that some countries consider “riots and terrorist activities” as a form of protest, denouncing the move by European countries that put the issue of additional resolutions or sanctions on the agenda of the upcoming meeting of the Council of Ministers of the European Union.
Despite numerous reports by the Ukrainian military about the use of the Iranian drones by the Russian forces, Amir-Abdollahian repeated claims that “The Islamic Republic of Iran has not and will not provide any weapon to be used in the Ukraine war.”
According to unconfirmed reports, the EU is set to sanction four entities and 11 high-ranking Iranian military and security officials for their roles in the repression of the uprising, ignited by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini.
During a phone conversation with Amir-Abdollahian on Friday, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell urged the Islamic Republic to stop the repression of protesters and to release those detained since the uprising began in mid-September.
A senior EU official said Friday that the EU foreign ministers will meet in Luxembourg on Monday also to discuss the transfer of Iranian drones to Russia, noting that the ministers will not take any decisions on additional Iran sanctions but could reach a political agreement on future sanctions linked to a transfer of drones.
Despite reports that Tehran is sending out letters to EU diplomats, claiming that "bilateral relations may not survive" as the EU moves to penalize Iran for killing protesters, the uprising is garnering more and more support among Western government officials and politicians.
