PARIS — A
fire and clashes erupted at Tehran’s notorious Evin prison Saturday night as
the protest movement sparked by
Mahsa Amini’s death in custody entered a fifth
week.
اضافة اعلان
The facility in
northern Tehran is infamous for the ill-treatment of political prisoners and
also holds foreign detainees. Hundreds of those detained during the
demonstrations over Amini’s death have reportedly been sent there.
Flames and a plume
of smoke could be seen billowing into the night sky, and the sound of what
appeared to be gunfire could be heard in video footage shared on Twitter by the
Oslo-based Iran Human Rights.
“A fire is
spreading in Evin prison” and an “explosion was heard” from the facility, the
1500tasvir social media channel, which monitors protests and police violations,
said on Twitter.
Amini, 22, died on
September 16, three days after falling into a coma following her arrest by
Iran’s notorious morality police over an alleged breach of the Islamic
republic’s strict dress code for women.
Iranian state media
said early Sunday that the fire caused during “riots and clashes” at the prison
had been extinguished.
Citing a Tehran
prosecutor, the IRNA news agency said the situation was now calm and that the
clashes had “nothing to do with the recent unrest in the country”. IRNA earlier
reported at least eight injured at the jail.
Rights groups
reported protests in solidarity with Evin detainees in Tehran late into the
night, after angry demonstrators had taken to streets across Iran on Saturday
despite internet cuts.
Young women have
been at the forefront of the current wave of street protests, the biggest seen
in the country for years.
“Guns, tanks,
fireworks; the mullahs must get lost,” women without hijabs chanted at a gathering
at Tehran’s Shariati Technical and Vocational College, in a video widely shared
online.
Scores of jeering
and whistling protesters hurled projectiles at security forces near a landmark
roundabout in Hamedan city, west of Tehran, in footage verified by AFP.
Despite what online
monitor
NetBlocks called a “major disruption to internet traffic”, protesters
were also seen pouring onto the streets of the northwestern city of Ardabil in
videos shared on Twitter.
Shopkeepers went on
strike in Amini’s hometown of Saqez, in Kurdistan province, and Mahabad in West
Azerbaijan, said 1500tasvir.
There had been an
appeal for a huge turnout for protests on Saturday under the slogan “The
beginning of the end!”
“We have to be
present in the squares, because the best VPN these days is the street,”
activists declared, referring to virtual private networks used to skirt
internet restrictions.
‘Riots’
At least 108 people have been killed in the Amini protests, and at least
93 more have died in separate clashes in Zahedan, capital of the southeastern
province of Sistan-Baluchestan, according to Iran Human Rights.
The unrest has
continued despite what Amnesty International has called an “unrelenting brutal
crackdown” that has included an “all-out attack on child protesters” — leading
to the deaths of at least 23 minors.
A
Revolutionary Guards commander said Saturday that three members of its Basij militia had been
killed and 850 wounded in Tehran since the start of the “sedition”, state news
agency IRNA said.
Iran’s supreme leader
has accused the country’s enemies, including the US and Israel, of fomenting
the “riots”.
In response to the
protests, the clerical state’s security forces have also launched a campaign of
mass arrests of artists, dissidents, journalists, and athletes.
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