A riot police unit arrived at the facility two days before a fire tore through a portion of Iran’s Evin prison and killed at least eight people, six sources told Reuters. They immediately started to patrol the hallways while shouting ‘God is Greatest’ and banging batons on cell doors.
The sources claimed that there was no indication of inmate agitation before the patrols at the Tehran jail started. The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei should be overthrown, some detainees said in response to these patrols from Thursday to Saturday, echoing nationwide demonstrations that have been going on since September.
According to a prisoner in ward 8, which houses largely inmates convicted of financial crimes, ‘then we heard guns and chants of ‘Death to Khamenei’ by detainees in other wards.’
The prisoner, who was speaking to Reuters for the first time, agreed to an anonymized interview and asked that no mention of the means of communication be made.
After a month of violence involving security forces and anti-government protestors, the violent police crackdown and the fatal fire on the evening of October 15—the sources of which are under investigation—have jolted a country already on edge.
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