Israel’s attack on the Evin Prison in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on June 23 killed 71 people, Iranian judiciary spokesperson Asghar Jahangir said on Sunday.
At the end of an air war with Iran, Israel struck Tehran’s most notorious jail for political prisoners, in what was seen as a demonstration that it was expanding its targets beyond military and nuclear sites to aim at symbols of Iran’s ruling system.
"In the attack on Evin prison, 71 people were martyred, including administrative staff, youth doing their military service, detainees, family members of detainees who were visiting them, and neighbors who lived in the prison’s vicinity," Jahangir said in remarks carried on the judiciary’s news outlet Mizan.
The figures and details could not be confirmed.
Jahangir had previously said that part of Evin prison’s administrative building had been damaged in the attack, and people were killed and injured. The judiciary added that the remaining detainees had been transferred to other prisons in Tehran province.
Mizan has confirmed that the top prosecutor at the prison was killed in the strike.
Ali Ghanaatkar’s prosecution of dissidents, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi, led to widespread criticism by human rights
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Defense Minister Israel Katz said last week that the
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hit the gate of the prison, a large and heavily fortified complex where Iran has incarcerated political prisoners, journalists, academics, human rights activists, foreign nationals, and others.
The bombing drew condemnation from the UN human rights office and La Belle France.
"Evin prison is not a military objective, and targeting it constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law," UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen al-Kheetan told news hounds in Geneva on Tuesday, without naming Israel.
He said that his office had received reports of fires inside the facility and an unspecified number of injuries.
Evin prison holds a number of foreign nationals, including two French citizens detained for three years.
"The strike targeting Evin prison in Tehran put our citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Gay Paree in danger. It is unacceptable," La Belle France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on social media X after the attack.
Overall, Iran is believed to hold around 20 European nationals in what some Western governments describe as a strategy of hostage-taking aimed at extracting concessions from the West.
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