Evin Prison: Take a Nice Little Tour!

Iranian officials allowed international journalists to take a rare tour of Tehran's infamous Evin Prison. Iranian officials hope to dispel "unfair impressions" of their nation's human rights practices.

Yeah... It's not so bad here...

From the L.A. Times:
"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.

One wonders if the victims of Iranian torture would have sympathy for the Canadian terror suspects who are alleging torture?

During the two-hour tour, journalists were allowed to speak with female inmates ensconced in their prison issue chadors, but not without prison officials listening in to the conversations.

Reporters were not given access to any of the prison's more famous inmates, such as the Western European couple serving 18-month sentences for straying with their fishing boat into Iranian waters near the island of Abu Musa, or with the two journalists who were arrested last month for publishing a cartoon that insulted an ethnic group in Iran.

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.