DUBAI, UAE (AP) – The guard of a control room in Evin’s famous Iranian prison is striking as one by one, the monitors in front blink and show something very different from the surveillance images he had been watching.
“Cyberattack,” the monitors blink. Other guards meet, hold cell phones, and film or make urgent calls. “A general protest to the release of political prisoners” says another line on the screens.
An online account, allegedly by an entity that described itself as a group of hackers, shared images of the incident, as well as parts of other surveillance videos it confiscated, with The Associated Press. The alleged hackers said the release of the images was an effort to show the dire conditions of the prison, known for the presence of political prisoners and those with links abroad who are often used as bargaining chips. in negotiations with the West.
In one part of the footage, a man breaks a bathroom mirror to try to cut off his arm. Prisoners – and even guards – beat each other in scenes captured by surveillance cameras. Inmates sleeping in single rooms with bunk beds stacked three high against the walls, wrapping themselves in blankets to keep warm.
“We want the world to hear our voice for the release of all political prisoners,” read a message from the online account at the Dubai PA.
Iran, which has faced criticism from the UN special rapporteur on its conditions of imprisonment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent to its UN mission in New York. Iranian state media in the country have not acknowledged the incident in Evin.
However, several embarrassing incidents of hacking have affected Iran amid ongoing tensions over its accelerated nuclear program and as talks with the West over the reactivation of the atomic agreement between Tehran and world powers remain unresolved..
Four former prisoners of Evin, as well as an Iranian human rights activist abroad, have told the AP that the videos resemble areas of the facility north of Tehran. Some of the scenes also matched photographs of the facility previously taken by journalists, as well as images of the prison, as seen in the satellite photos accessed by the AP.
The images also show rows of sewing machines used by inmates, an isolation cell with a busy toilet, and outside areas of the prison. There are pictures of the prison’s outdoor exercise yard, inmate restrooms, and facility offices.
Much of the images contain timestamps from 2020 and this year. Several unmarked videos show guards wearing face masks, indicating they were arriving amid the coronavirus pandemic.
While there is no sound in the videos, they talk about the gloomy world the prisoners face in the facility. In one sequence is shown what appears to be a skinny man dumped from a car in the parking lot and then dragged through prison. Another shows a clergyman going down the stairs and passing by the man, non-stop.
Guards of another video are seen hitting a man in prison uniform. A guard sucks a prisoner into a cell. The guards also fight each other, as do the prisoners. Many are crammed into single-chamber cells. No one wears a face mask.
The account that shared the videos with the AP is called “Ali’s Justice,” a reference to the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, revered by Shiites. He also mocks Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei.
He claimed to have “hundreds” of gigabytes of data from what he described as a hack done a few months ago. He did not answer questions about who participated in the leak.
The story linked the timing of its leak to the recent election of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-line acolyte of Khamenei involved in the execution of thousands in 1988 at the end of the Iran-Iraq war.
“Evin Prison is a stain on Raisi’s black turban and white beard,” the message on the prison control room screens also read.
Iran, long sanctioned by the West, faces difficulties in upgrading hardware and software, often relying on Chinese-made electronics or old systems. The control room system seen in the video, for example, appeared to be running Windows 7, for which Microsoft no longer provides patches. This will facilitate targeting for a potential hacker. Pirated versions of Windows and other programs are common throughout Iran.
In recent months, the Iranian railway system has been the target of an apparent cyberattack. Other groups of self-described hackers have published details about Iranians alleging piracy in the name of theocracy. Meanwhile, the most famous cyberattack – the Stuxnet virus that destroyed Iranian centrifuges at the height of Western fears about the Tehran program – is suspected to have been an American and Israeli creation.
Evin Prison was built in 1971 under Iranian Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It housed political prisoners then and later, after the 1979 Islamic Revolution swept the shah of power.
While in theory he was under the control of the Iranian prison system, Evin also has specialized units for political prisoners and those with Western ties, led by the paramilitary revolutionary guard, which only responds to Khamenei. The installation is the target of sanctions from both the United States and the European Union.
After Iran repressed protesters after the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, many of the arrested protesters ended up in Evin. Lawmakers later pushed for reforms in Evin, following reports of prison abuses, which led to the installation of closed-circuit cameras.
The problems continued, however. Reports from UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman repeatedly called Evin Prison a place of prisoner abuse. Rehman warned in January that Iran’s entire prison system was facing “long-term unemployment and hygiene deficiencies” and “insurmountable obstacles to responding to COVID-19.”
“Prisoners of conscience and political prisoners have contracted COVID-19 or experienced symptoms, with many denials of testing or treatment or who have suffered unnecessary delays in receiving test and treatment results,” he wrote.
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Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.