Iran Opens Doors of Feared Evin Prison

Haleh Esfandiari, 67, director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Middle East Program, speaks to the news media in Washington on Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, about her incarceration in Tehran's Evin prison on allegations of endangering Iranian national security. She spent more than 100 days in prison before she was released on bail, and was finally allowed to leave the country on Sept. 2. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) (Jacquelyn Martin - AP)

In the women's block, teenager Behnaz Jangi said she was jailed for riding a motorcycle with her boyfriend.

"Anti-vice police arrested me for riding a motorcycle with an unrelated man. He was my boyfriend. That's all. I have spent 42 days here without trial and without any conviction," she complained. She was spending her time sewing dolls.

Some former prisoners have described harsher conditions at Evin. In April, Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a woman activist arrested during a demonstration the previous month, told The Associated Press that she was held in a room with no bed and with constant fluorescent light, which she described as "white torture."

Elise Auerbach, a Chicago-based Iran specialist with Amnesty International, said the group had catalogued a number of abuses at Evin prison through contacts with current and former detainees, including beatings, severe torture, deprivation of medical care and the inability to receive visits from family and lawyers.

"I think it's great that journalists have been able to get access to the prison, but I hope that people don't get the impression that what the Iranian government allows us to see is representative of what is actually going on there," said Auerbach.

"Certainly the fact that people have been tortured and some have died at Evin prison speaks to the reality of the situation."

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Associated Press writer Lily Hindy contributed to this report from New York.