ABC blog

Prison guards at Qarchak Women’s Prison in Varamin, Iran have forcibly cracked down on protesting inmates using beatings and tear gas, a family member of one prisoner held at the facility tells Abdorrahman Boroumand Center (ABC). According to the source, inmates – long dissatisfied with poor prison conditions – rose in protest after learning that an amnesty plan would free far fewer than prison officials had initially promised.

“A disaster has broken out at Qarchak” says the source. “Tear gas [has been deployed] in closed and windowless prison halls and many of the inmates are suffocating. Fires have broken out in many places and they’re filled with smoke. They’ve left some of the wounded to their own devices and have taken some others to the hospital.”

The source reports the chief reason for inmates’ protest was false promises made to them by prison officials regarding an amnesty plan, which the source describes as “psychological torture”: “Officials said last week that inmates would be pardoned by the Supreme Leader for the occasion of the 40^th anniversary of the revolution. My sister called me in a great mood and said, ‘If only it were always the revolution’s 40^th anniversary!’ They told the inmates two-thirds of them would be pardoned, but yesterday [February 7] it became clear that this wouldn’t be the case. Now that the names of those to be pardoned have come out, it’s clear that the pardons would be granted as they have before [i.e. to a much smaller number.]”

Some one thousand female inmates are imprisoned at Qarchak, according to the source.  “Most prisoners had gathered up their things following statements from officials that all of them would be freed except [those sentenced for murder in the qesas framework of Iranian law] as well as accessories to murder. The protests were nothing out of the ordinary: they pounded on their doors and walls a bit. Prison guards attacked them with batons and gas nonetheless. Inmates set fire to blankets [so that the smoke would counter the effects of the tear gas].”

The source tells ABC that when other prisoners witnessed the crackdown on their fellow inmates, even those who had not participated in the initial protest joined in, and general disorder then broke out. The source describes sub-standard conditions at the Qarchak facility: “Everything here could be protested: Bad food, bad medication, [bad water]. But the thing that would anger inmates this much is for officials to first tell them they’d go free, that they should gather up their things, and then later say there had been a mistake. If not for this, prison officials have neglected ill inmates for years. These are ordinary prisoners who have been behind bars for years. They’d gotten their hopes up that they’d be freed over all the television and radio coverage of the 40^th anniversary widespread amnesty plan. You have no idea what was going on in the visitation room! They were all saying they’d be freed!”