US sanctions former head of Iran’s notorious Evin prison, 13 other Iranians

The United States announced on Friday new sanctions on 14 Iranian individuals, including the former director of Iran’s notorious Evin prison.

The designations are the latest part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign, which has increased targeted sanctions on the Iranian regime since leaving the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2018.

Former director of Iran’s Evin prison, Hojatollah Khodaei Souri, was listed as one of the Iranians who will have their visas restricted.

Souri “oversaw an institution synonymous with torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” the State Department said in a statement. Souri is also a former Iranian parliament member.

An Iranian inmate peers from behind a wall as a guard walks by at the female section of the infamous Evin jail, north of Tehran, on June 13, 2006. (AFP)

Evin prison, located in northwestern Tehran, is notorious for cruel and prolonged torture, using methods such as threats of execution or rape, sleep deprivation, electroshock, and severe beatings.

The first prisoners entered Evin in 1971 under the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Now it is used as the primary detention center for the Iranian regime’s political dissidents.

Iranian women inmates sit at their cell in the infamous Evin jail, north of Tehran, on 13 June 2006. (AFP)

“Evin Prison has been used to oppress peaceful Iranian protestors and journalists, as well as foreigners who are swept up and imprisoned to be held hostage to squeeze concessions out of their home governments,” the State Department said.

The thirteen other Iranians designated were individuals “involved in a brutal and intricately planned assassination carried out in Switzerland in 1990.”

“These 13 assassins, who posed as Iranian diplomats, were acting under the highest orders of their government to silence opposition and show that no one is safe from the Iranian regime, no matter where they live,” according to the State Department statement.

“The United States will not stand for the Iranian regime silencing its critics through violence and terror,” it added.

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