At a time when the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988) was in full swing, in October 1986, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, one of the most well-known figures in Iran, penned a letter addressed to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini. In his letter, Muntazerî described the terrible crimes that were committed by the state in the country’s prisons; He was talking about the murdered pregnant women, the religious youth who were killed at the time of iftar, and the prisoners who lost their memory due to the regular beatings every day. Emphasizing that people began to lose their sympathy for the "Islamic Revolution" due to brutal treatment and extrajudicial executions, Montazeri also included the following striking comparison in his lines: "The crimes committed in the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran surpassed what the Shah did!"
The person who penned the letter in question was not an ordinary person: Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri was imprisoned and tortured during the reign of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and later became "Khomeini's right-hand man" by playing an active role in the overthrow of the Shah. So much so that when Khomeini returned to Iran as a victorious leader in 1979, he declared Montazeri as his successor. When Khomeini died, Montazeri would take his place. However, Muntazeri's reaction to Khomeini due to what happened in the prisons ("I can't answer for this in the hereafter") would lead to a rift between the two men.
In the summer of 1988, the mass execution of thousands of detainees in dungeons, especially in the Evin Prison, which is a notorious center of torture in Tehran, was the breaking point. Seeing that his warnings were not taken into account, Ayatollah Montazeri made public statements this time, declaring that he condemned torture and executions. As tensions escalated, Khomeini dismissed Montazeri as his successor in a letter dated March 26, 1989. Ayatollah Montazeri would live under house arrest until his death on December 19, 2009.
(Montazeri estimated the total number of prisoners killed in Evin and other prisons at 3,800 during the mass executions in 1988. While some anti-regime sources put the number as high as 30,000, which is clearly an exaggeration.)
The Evin Prison, which conjures up fear and trauma in the collective memory of the Iranian people, was established in 1972 at the behest of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. SAVAK, the notorious intelligence agency that carried out the Shah's brutal orders, used it as an interrogation, torture, and execution center for the next 7 years. Thousands of people passed through Evin, and hundreds died here. Along with the thousands of civilians that SAVAK destroyed in different places and forms... When the Shah was overthrown in 1979 and the "Islamic Republic" was established in its place, the Evin Prison was now transformed into a house of horror where the opponents of the new administration were imprisoned. It seemed that the execution noose had just changed hands.
Syria, Iran's satellite and home base in the Middle East, is also notorious for its prisons that spew death. The Tadmur Prison, which was built as a barracks in the middle of the desert by the French during the Mandate rule, is the first example that springs to mind. In the "Massacre of Tadmur" that took place on June 27, 1980, thousands of detainees were killed in their cells and in the courtyards of the prison with automatic weapons. Among those who lost their lives were many academics, doctors, engineers, and scholars who were imprisoned for political reasons. The Baath regime launched the mass Sunni massacre from Tadmur, which was to be concluded in 1982 in Hama. Likewise, the Mazzeh Military Prison in Damascus was a second torture stronghold where the opponents of the Damascus administration met their fates. The most infamous of those who died here was Salah Jdid, one of the leaders of the Syrian Baath Party in the 1960s. As he was serving as Hafez Assad's right-hand man, Jdid found himself in Mazzeh as a result of the feud that would later break out and was kept in prison until he died of a "heart attack" on August 19, 1993.
Abu Ghraib Prison, which was the scene of the barbarous acts of the U.S. occupiers against civilians after the invasion of Iraq, is alive in everyone's memory as perhaps the most notorious of the torture centers in our region. However, the U.S. took over the place from Saddam Hussein's regime. Likewise, the notorious Abu Salim Prison in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, was synonymous with death in the collective memory of Libyans. The deaths of at least 1250 people who were killed in a mass execution carried out in Abu Salim on 28 June 1996 are well documented.
For those working in the Middle East, two thesis topics are proposed: "The role of prisons in the spread of radical movements and terrorism" and "The multifaceted aftermath of dictatorships' use of prisons on countries".
