Translated Content:
Nayre Khademi - Prison is a closed environment and there is no escape. Prison is not a battlefield, prison is a prison. On the battlefield, everything is possible, because it is a battlefield, but prison is closed and it is not an environment where anyone wants to fight. According to Etemad, "Hossein", a soldier who has served in Evin Prison for 18 months, says these words because he did not expect that Evin Prison would be attacked by missiles during the Israeli-Iranian war. This is also what "Tahereh Khanum" said. On Monday, June 23 when she set out for Evin Prison to post bail for the release of her only son, she did not think at all that the prison would be hit by an enemy missile and in fact, she went there safely. Of course, some did not think so, like "Reza", an Evin Prison facility employee who says: "I told myself, 'Well, let it go, God has given us a lifetime, now it's either this way or that way.'" All three were injured in the Israeli attack on Evin Prison. First, the emergency room took them to Modares or Taleghani Hospital in Tehran, then they were transferred to Shohada Tajrish Hospital, and now, in the days when we are living in a fragile ceasefire, each of them has shared their stories of that day with the Etemad reporter. Prison is not a battlefield At around 11:30 am on the second day of Tir month, Hossein closed one of the entrance doors to Evin Prison and returned to the hall. At that moment, he witnessed the first missile hit the parking lot of the meeting hall, and he himself was buried under the ground with the first explosion along with his colleagues. "I, a few soldiers and one of our officers went under the rubble and were rescued after about an hour. I don't remember much from that time, I only know that at 12:30-1, I was admitted to Taleghani Hospital and saw my colleagues there, each of whom had been injured." When Hossein was under the rubble, he had not yet lost consciousness and could hear the sound of the next missiles hitting Evin Prison: "As far as my brain could hear, almost every few minutes, another missile hit the prison. At that time and in the initial moments, Evin was very crowded, people were fleeing and everyone was in shock. So no one could hear me either. The missile continued to hit the meeting hall, there was not just one missile, there were two, three, and I could hear it going further and towards the middle of the prison, maybe about ten missiles hit. When it became quieter, I made a little noise until they heard my voice from under the ground and a few rescuers pulled me out. In that situation, I can say that I was both scared and not. I was happy at the thought of maybe becoming a martyr. When I went underground, the first thing I said was, thank God. I think I was under the ground for about an hour, and during that hour I could only breathe slowly, otherwise I would have fainted, and in those circumstances, if I had fainted, no one would have heard me. After the initial moments when the rubble fell on my head, more and more dirt kept falling on me. I felt the weight of the rubble on my body and there was no light. I couldn’t move and I thought I was a martyr.” When the rubble fell on him, the first blow hit Hussein’s back and spine, and at that moment he couldn’t do anything else. “Most of the soldiers in the hall were injured and many of the soldiers in the unit were martyred.” In the middle of the conversation, his mood changes and he starts moaning. As his mother says, he remembers the commander and the rest of his comrades who were martyred from the previous days, and he does the same. Hussein cries for his colleagues. He is sad and keeps saying, "I didn't have the honor of martyrdom: "I tell him, God decides who will be given the privilege of martyrdom and who will be given life. He has given you a chance to live and the privilege of martyrdom to others." Hossein is from Bojnourd and has served for 18 months and is just 23 years old. After getting his bicycle, he worked with his parents on their farmland to save money so he could go to military service: "Last year, when we planted rice, Hossein helped us, and one year he planted rice himself. In total, he farmed for two or three years, and when he was free, he went to military service. That day, I heard that they had attacked Evin, I didn't think my son was injured because he kept saying, 'Don't be sad, prison doesn't work like that,' but on Monday they told us from Taleghani Hospital that he was injured." According to Article 3 Common to the Four Geneva Conventions and the principles enshrined in customary international law, persons deprived of their liberty, whether criminal prisoners or detainees, must at all times enjoy protection against violence, inhuman treatment, threats to life and ill-treatment, and an attack on a completely civilian and specially protected place is a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute. Accordingly, Hussein, like many people who were in the Evin prison compound that day as doctors, administrative staff or visitors, did not even think of attacking the prison. “A prison is a closed environment and there is no escape. A prison is not a battlefield, a prison is a prison. In a battlefield, everything is possible because it is a battlefield, but a prison is closed and it is not an environment where anyone wants to fight.” He has four siblings and is the youngest son of the family. Currently, his vertebrae are damaged, but the extent of the damage is not yet clear, and doctors and nurses prefer to comment more cautiously on this matter. You don't know what apocalypse "Tahira Khanum" was. She is 72 years old, retired from education and training and lost her husband about 30 years ago. On Monday, she went to Evin to release her only child from prison to post bail for him, but while she was sitting in the waiting room to complete the legal process, a rocket hit the room and she was seriously injured. "I went to Evin with my wife and my son's father, took a number and waited for our turn. We were sitting in the courtyard and were watching our grandson's movie when suddenly they fired a volley of rockets at the prison and the prison wall fell on us. I put my hand on my head but my body was injured, including both my legs and one of my hands. I could see my toe being torn off and it was only covered in skin and the flesh of my hand had come out. At that moment, I saw myself being mutilated with my own eyes." Apparently, anyone who was further away from the administrative area of the prison was less injured, but overall, Tahereh Khanum describes the conditions that day as terrible: "I was so absorbed in myself that I didn't notice my surroundings. I saw myself and my legs covered in blood. I tried to move towards the car that was a little ahead, but I couldn't, so I asked for help. Two young boys helped and got me to the car. The emergency room first took me to the hospital, and there was a shortage there, because they had taken patients there suddenly anyway. Then they brought me to the Tajrish Martyrs' Hospital with another man who was in a worse condition. I was in the operating room for 6 hours, both my legs and one of my hands were badly injured. Now they are injecting me with a lot of painkillers so that I can bear the pain. My son also called and asked about bail, I said; I can't move even two inches and I can't put my foot on the ground, don't even say anything because it's no one else's business and I have to take the bail to the prison myself." For a few hours, the pain in his hand has been worse than before, so he is worried about what new thing has happened to him. According to him, he saw death before his eyes, and that too in a situation where he didn't expect it to be bombed. He told himself that they wouldn't bomb the prison, there were many civilians there, so he went safely, but the thing he didn't expect happened. However, at that moment, he tried his best not to hurt his head and shoulders, and he succeeded, but instead, one of his arms and both legs were injured. "We said we'd go, give our details, post bail so my son would be released, and then we'd come back, and that's what happened. They were firing missiles at me so hard that I thought I wouldn't survive. I thought that no part of my body would be amputated, and I am thankful that this did not happen. I sleep with a sedative at night, facing one side or the other. I was supposed to be discharged yesterday, but they opened the wounds and saw that there was still a lot of work to be done to heal. I am losing weight and my whole body hurts. Those moments were Ashura and the Day of Judgment, and I will never forget them. I hope that no one will suffer and that these things will never happen again because we can no longer bear it. It was terrible. May God help us to get out of this situation and that we all see a good day. We have always seen many things on TV, but I saw this event live. Reality is not what you watch on TV because there you are so focused on so many places and you do not have that real understanding. Far from it, until that disaster happens to you, you do not understand what the person who has been shot and is running and escaping is going through. At that moment, everyone was running and screaming like me. Some were asking each other for help, and in the meantime, some were abandoning themselves and helping others, like the two young boys who helped me. It was unclear if it wasn’t for them, I might have fallen right there.” I had gone to service the air conditioner. The third person, “Agha Reza,” is a utility worker; a 55-year-old father who has been working in Evin Prison for 24 years. He had been told to service the air conditioner in the meeting room, so a few minutes before the missile attack, he went to the stairs of the meeting room with a 2.5-meter ladder to go to the roof, but only a few steps away from the roof, he was thrown out of the area by an explosion and buried under the rubble: “The whole area was covered in dust and dirt, and you didn’t know where to go. At the moment when I was under the rubble, one of my colleagues called out to me and said, ‘Get your foot out of here so that it can come up.’ I heard his voice and he pulled me up a little higher, and then he said, ‘Wait until I go get help.’” "I heard that and nothing else came to my mind. I was one of the first people to be taken to Modares Hospital, where they took a lot of pictures (diagnostic imaging) of me, which I also complained about. Then they transferred me here. My back and left leg were injured, and there were pieces of dirt and glass in my face and body. My left side is completely useless and I am in a lot of pain. My back has been operated on for now, but they put a splint on my leg so that they can do other things if needed," his brother, who is standing there in the room, says; On the first day, his colleagues called my older brother and said that nothing had happened, just bring him clothes, but when he came to the hospital, he realized the extent of Reza's injuries and damages. Many of the people who were present in the Evin Prison compound on Sunday morning, in any capacity; prisoners, patients, visitors, soldiers or employees, helpers and doctors, did not even think that the prison would be attacked by Israel. Now, reports indicate the martyrdom of many ordinary citizens in those attacks. As Afkar News wrote, Leila and Hajar were women who had gone to Evin to post bail and release their prisoners, and Zohreh Sadat and Hassan Shojaei were prison employees and Mahan were soldiers there, but they were all martyred. Judge Ali Ghanetkar, head of the 33rd District Prosecutor's Office of Tehran, was another person killed in the attack, as was Dr. Seyyed Davoud Shirvani, a specialist physician at Imam Khomeini Hospital who was present at the prison on Monday. About a week after the incident, Asghar Jahangir, spokesman for the judiciary, announced that according to the latest official statistics on the number of martyrs in the attack on Evin Prison, 71 people had been martyred; including prison administrative staff, conscripts, prisoners, families of prisoners who had visited the prison to visit or pursue their prisoners in court, and neighbors who lived near the prison. Meanwhile, there are concerns and criticisms about the transfer of Evin prisoners to other prisons, including Ghezel Hesar, Rajai Shahr, and Greater Tehran, which is said to be temporary. Therefore, the injured in Evin and the families of the prisoners are waiting for these transfers to result in release, permanent transfer, or return to their former prisons in the near future.