For the subsequent 10 years, Lindsay and Craig Foreman may call one in every of Iran’s most notorious prisons home.
The British couple were jailed today over allegations of espionage after being arrested last yr during an around-the-world motorcycle journey.
They’re currently held in Evin prison, a detention facility in Tehran where dissidents and political prisoners are held.
Human rights campaigners have long viewed the jail as an emblem of the iron-fisted rule of the Islamic Republic.
The Foremans, who deny all wrongdoing, have described being holed up in eight-foot cells with nothing greater than a hole in the ground and a sink.
Here’s what to know concerning the prison.
What’s Evin prison?
The compound, opened in 1971, sits on the picturesque slopes of the Alborz Mountain in northern Tehran.
Inside a couple of years, the institution gained a status for the conditions prisoners face inside.
In 1988, 1000’s of prisoners were executed after cursory trials in what the Human Rights Watch called the ‘darkest period in Evin’s history’.
Inmates include opposition politicians campaigner’s journalists, lawyers and even students, with concrete partitions, electrified barbed-wire fences and a minefield between them and the surface world.
Residents of foreign countries and dual residents have routinely been placed in Evin, akin to French nationals Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris.
The pair, who were imprisoned on charges of spying for France and Israel, were held for 3 years before being freed last yr.
These years-long prison sentences have led to the UK and the US accusing Iran of using foreign nationals as political bargaining chips.
Also amongst them are the protesters who took to the streets in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian woman arrested by the country’s so-called morality police.
In the course of the unrest, a fireplace broke out at Evin amid clashes between prisoners who had been staging sit-ins and chanting anti-government slogans.
Although Amnesty International said the fireplace was used as a justification for the bloody crackdown that followed by the hands of prison guards.
Israel targeted Evin prison last yr, killing 79 people and wounding dozens, including prison guards, prisoners and visiting relations.
At the very least six projectiles damaged 28 buildings, reducing stretches to piles of debris and mangled metal beams. Human Rights Watch said this amounted to a war crime.
What are conditions like on the prison?
Harsh treatment and abuse are widespread, based on former prisoners.
They are saying they’ve gruelling interrogations, torture, rape, psychological humiliation and solitary confinement.
Some ex-inmates say they endured hours-long interrogations while blindfolded and the lights were continuously on of their cells to stop them from sleeping.
All they might hear were the cries from the opposite cells or the barks from prison guards threatening their families.
Bed bugs, cockroaches and rats are said to scuttle through the feet of the sometimes dozens of individuals housed in halls with just 4 rooms.
That features Craig, who said he spent 57 days in confinement, which ’emotionally and physically’ broke him.
Lindsay told the BBC that she has spends her days running ‘in circles’ within the prison’s cramped yard.
She told the broadcaster: ‘I’ve resigned myself to the proven fact that my physical health won’t be what it was once I got here in but I can regain it once I leave…
‘I’m surrounded by people who find themselves in worse situations who need to live this their entire life, so not directly I feel lucky that I’ve had the life I even have until this point – and hopefully in the future for me it’ll end.’
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