At an Infamous Iranian Prison, Doors Are Flung Open Partway

Iranian officials took the rare step Tuesday of allowing local and international journalists to visit parts of the capital’s notorious Evin prison in an attempt to dispel what they say is an unfair impression of their nation’s human rights practices.

Justice Minister Jamal Karimi-Rad said the tour, believed to be the first of an Iranian prison by foreign journalists since 1994, came ahead of the first session of the new United Nations Human Rights Council, scheduled for next week.

“We want to change this impression that exists outside of this prison,” said Abbas Khamizadeh, superintendent of the facility, as 20 journalists were shown around a women’s wing, the clinic and the kitchen. “Evin prison of today is not the same Evin prison of several years ago.”

The group Human Rights Watch said in a report this year that respect for rights was deteriorating in Iran.

“Treatment of detainees has worsened in Evin prison as well as detention centers operated clandestinely by the judiciary and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards,” the New York-based organization said. “The authorities have subjected those imprisoned for peaceful expression of their political views to torture and ill treatment.”

Last year, the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, acknowledged serious rights violations in the prison system, including torture, illegal detentions and coercive interrogation.

During Tuesday’s two-hour tour, journalists were allowed to speak with female inmates but could not visit the men’s wings or any of the better-known prisoners. Some journalists complained that when they spoke to inmates, prison officials invariably listened in.

The women’s wing appeared clean and tidy. As many as 10 bunk beds were in each large room.

It was to this or a similar women’s wing in Evin that Canadian Iranian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi was taken in June 2003 after she was arrested outside for photographing protesters. She later died after being beaten in custody.

There were no signs of tension on Tuesday, however. On one wall was a chart of the voluntary activities available to prisoners, such as visits to the library or the gym.

Many of the 375 female inmates are young women serving sentences for illicit relations with men. Sex outside marriage is illegal in Iran, and adultery can carry a sentence of stoning.

“I am still in shock. It’s not a real world here,” said Nazanin Jalilvand, 20, holding tightly to her blue-and-white flowery chador, the all-enveloping cover issued to female inmates. Jalilvand, brought to the prison two days earlier, said she and her boyfriend were arrested when paramilitary volunteers raided a jewelry workshop they were visiting. Her boyfriend escaped soon after his arrest, she said, though it wasn’t immediately clear how.

Ashraf Ulsadat, 70, said she had been in prison two years for being unable to pay a debt of about $4,000.

Authorities deny holding any political prisoners in Evin.

“We do not have any legal definition for political prisoners. Some of those who are held here are charged with acting against national security,” said Sohrab Soleimani, head of the provincial prisons bureau, who accompanied journalists.

Though it has been widely believed that hundreds of political prisoners are held at Evin, Soleimani said only 14 or 15 of them were in the “national security” category.

A young woman in the tailoring workshop who declined to give her name said she and her husband were arrested for publishing a book that challenged the official interpretation of Islam.

“We wanted to say this is not Islam that we see being implemented in Iran,” she said. “We used a computer printer to publish the book.” She and her husband, who is in solitary confinement at Evin, are awaiting trial.

Prison authorities would not allow journalists to visit the wings that house such well-known prisoners as professor Ramin Jahanbegloo, an internationally renowned philosopher who was arrested in late April. A week after he was detained, authorities said he was being held as a spy.

Karimi-Rad, the justice minister, on Wednesday confirmed reports that Jahanbegloo was undergoing continued interrogations without access to a lawyer. He said journalists could not see the inmate without court approval.

“It’s a security case, and in cases such as this, while the investigations are continuing, they cannot have access to their lawyers,” Karimi-Rad said.

Authorities also refused to allow reporters to visit two journalists with a government-owned newspaper who were arrested last month for publishing a cartoon that depicted a cockroach speaking Azeri, the language of the largest ethnic minority in Iran.

The cartoon led to 10 days of unrest in Azeri-speaking towns in the northwest.

Visiting journalists also were not given access to a Western European couple serving 18-month sentences for straying with their fishing boat into Iranian waters near the disputed island of Abu Musa.

Karimi-Rad said that the families of the two had asked for a reprieve and that the case was being reviewed.