Watchdog

A hacktivist group that claims to work inside Iran to expose the "true face of the regime" has released new footage highlighting inhumane conditions in the country's most notorious prison.

The new video, provided exclusively to RFE/RL's Radio Farda this week by Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice), adds to the evidence of extreme overcrowding at Tehran's Evin prison.

The footage shows prisoners lying wall to wall on floors and stacked three-high on metal bunk beds. As the camera moves from open cell to open cell, each equipped with beds for about 30 inmates, it reveals rooms filled with up to 50 inmates.

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Leaked Video Exposes Extreme Conditions In Notorious Iranian Prison

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RFE/RL could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

It is unclear when the footage was recorded, but Iran has consistently come under criticism from rights watchdogs for overcrowding and unsanitary conditions at its prisons, a problem that has contributed to COVID infections and deaths.

Edalat-e Ali has released a string of hacked videos and confidential documents that have exposed the systematic mistreatment of inmates at Evin prison. The leaks have even led to rare official acknowledgment that prison abuses were taking place at the facility that primarily houses political detainees.

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Previous videos, which were hacked from CCTV cameras and published by Radio Farda among other media outlets, have shown prison guards assaulting detainees and inhumane conditions at the facility. The documents leaked by the hacktivist group have detailed how Evin prison authorities took harsh steps to break hunger strikes by prominent prisoners, including the denial of visitation rights and the blockage of phone access.

Mohammad Mehdi Hajmohammadi, the head of Iran's Prisons Organization, in August issued an apology and accepted responsibility for the "unacceptable behavior" at the prison, while judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei ordered an investigation.

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It was later announced that members of the prison staff had been suspended and that some cases had been forwarded to a military court. A member of parliament, meanwhile, demanded that those responsible for the publication of the video leaks be punished.

The emergence of the clips also led to harsh criticism from international rights watchdogs.

"This disturbing footage offers a rare glimpse of the cruelty regularly meted out to prisoners in Iran," Heba Morayef, the Middle East and North Africa regional director at Amnesty International, said in August. "It is shocking to see what goes on inside the walls of Evin prison, but sadly the abuse depicted in these leaked video clips is just the tip of the iceberg of Iran's torture epidemic."

The previous month, Amnesty had said that leaked documents that revealed the Iranian government had ignored prison officials' pleas for additional resources to control the spread of the coronavirus were in "stark contrast" to the judiciary's claims that it had introduced initiatives to protect prisoners from the pandemic.

"Overcrowding, poor ventilation, lack of basic sanitation and medical equipment, and deliberate neglect of prisoners' health problems are making Iranian prisons a perfect breeding ground for COVID-19," Amnesty said.

Edalat-e Ali, in an interview with Radio Farda in November, said that it was made up of Iranians working and living in Iran who sought to expose human rights abuses in the country.

In February, the group announced in a call to Radio Farda that the Ghezel Hesar prison in the city of Karaj had been hacked.

The group provided Radio Farda with a list of hundreds of Iranians who were detained during student protests in 1998 and held in Ghezel Hesar prison.

A former Belarusian professor who was arrested for 15 days for allegedly taking part in an anti-war protest in Minsk says detainees were mistreated, including being crammed into a cold cell.

Belarus, an ally of Russia, has banned criticism of Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Natalya Dulina, who taught at the Linguistics University, said she was placed into a two-person holding cell at the notorious Akrestsina detention center with 16 other people and not fed until her hearing three days later.

She slept on the floor, she told RFE/RL in an interview following her release.

RFE/RL could not immediately confirm her account but it resembles stories told by former inmates who were held at the same detention center for participating in the political protests that erupted following the disputed 2020 presidential elections.

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Dulina said she was detained on February 28 outside a Minsk train station where a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine was to be held.

Dulina said she was getting ready to take a train to a Minsk suburb when she saw police violently detain a young man who arrived to join the protest.

She said she flew into a rage, yelled at the police, and was taken into custody on charges of participating in a rally that had yet to take place.

While the police did release some detainees who could show they had a train ticket, Dulina said they kept her because she had previously been detained for taking part in political protests.

Dulina was among the thousands of Belarusians arrested during the series of demonstrations that followed the August 2020 presidential election.

The Crisis In Belarus

Read our coverage as Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka continues his brutal crackdown on NGOs, activists, and independent media following the August 2020 presidential election.

Authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, claimed he won the election in a landslide, triggering the largest wave of protests in the country since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In their February 28 protocol detailing her detention at the train station, Belarusian police accused Dulina of chanting "No to war" and "Glory to Ukraine," something she vehemently denies.

She said a "witness" took the stand at her hearing three days later who could neither recall where she was standing at the train station or who was next to her. The judge, nonetheless, sentenced her to 15 days in jail.

Dulina said she was then transferred to a six-person cell that contained 24 other women.

While most were other political prisoners, the group did include a homeless person and a woman accused of murder, she said.

Dulina said the window on the prison door was kept shut and it was hard to breathe inside the cell.

Inmates were denied packages from family except prescription drugs, she said.

Dulina recalled a guard banging one prisoner's head against a wall after she made requests for medicine and toiletry.

She said "nonpolitical" prisoners were treated better. They were given mattresses with sheets, were allowed to leave the cell for walks in fresh air, and permitted to take showers.

Political prisoners were subjected to roll calls at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m., she said, disrupting their sleep.

Dulina said she and others in her cell caught a severe cold by the end of their 15-day sentence due to the poor conditions.

The U.S. State Department in December slapped visa bans on two heads of the Akrestsina detention center for their involvement in "gross violations" of human rights following the 2020 presidential election.

In a statement, the State Department accused Ihar Kenyukh and Yauheni Shapetska of involvement in "the torture and/or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment or punishment of detainees" during Lukashenka's brutal crackdown on dissent after the August 2020 vote.