DUBAI: Eight prisoners died as a result of a fire at Tehran’s Evin prison over the weekend, Iran’s judiciary said on Monday, doubling the death toll from the blaze which has increased pressure on a government struggling to contain mass protests.
The death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16 while in police custody has sparked protests across the country which the authorities have been trying to put down by force.
Iran’s judiciary said all the victims of the prison blaze had been held in a section of the prison designated for prisoners of robbery-related crimes. Evin also holds political prisoners and many detainees facing security charges, including Iranians with dual nationality.
Authorities said that a prison workshop had been set on fire “after a fight among a number of prisoners convicted of financial crimes and theft.” State media reported on Sunday that the first four deaths had been caused by smoke inhalation and that more than 60 had been injured, four of them critically.
In a commentary, state newspaper Iran said that counter-revolutionary forces with the help of foreign intelligence services planned the fire in order to keep international attention on the country’s unrest.
“A review of its different dimensions of this event indicates due to the presence of these dual-national “spies” or “spies” who are citizens of western countries, this would attract sensitivity of those countries, igniting the protesters,” said the newspaper.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said the fire at Evin could happen in any country.
US President Joe Biden and the European Union are among those to have criticized Tehran’s crackdown on protesters, with the EU considering to impose asset freezes and travel bans on a number of Iranian officials involved.
The judiciary spokesperson Masoud Setayeshi warned that “Spreading lies with the intention of disturbing public opinion is punishable by law.”
Families of some political detainees took to social media to call on the authorities to ensure their safety at Evin, which in 2018 was blacklisted by the US government for “serious human rights abuses.”
The protests sparked by Amini’s death a month ago have turned into one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 revolution, with protesters calling for the downfall of the Islamic Republic, even if the unrest does not seem close to toppling the system.
Protests resumed early on Monday in Yazd and several other cities. The widely followed activist Tasvir1500 Twitter account carried a video showing people setting fire in the streets and calling for the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Reuters could not independently verify the videos. Iran has deployed the Basij militia, voluntary military troops which have been at the forefront of repressing popular unrest, but they have failed to contain the protests.
The elite Revolutionary Guards, who have not taken part in the crackdown, began military exercises on Monday.
Rights groups said at least 240 protesters had been killed, including 32 minors. Over 8,000 people had been arrested in 111 cities and towns, Iranian activist news agency HRANA said on Saturday. The authorities have not published a death toll.
Iran, which has blamed the violence on enemies at home and abroad, denies security forces have killed protesters. State media said on Saturday at least 26 members of the security forces had been killed by “rioters.”
Iran prison fire death toll rises to 8 inmates killed
https://arab.news/bw2pp
Iran prison fire death toll rises to 8 inmates killed
- State media reported that the blaze was extinguished after several hours and no detainees escaped
- Rights groups said at least 240 protesters had been killed, including 32 minors
Lifting sanctions on Syria will prevent Daesh resurgence and strengthen the nation, experts say
- Conference in Washington discusses effects US policies are having on post-Assad Syria, and the continuing economic hardships in the country that could fuel terrorism
- Participants praise US President Donald Trump for taking the right steps to help the war-torn nation move towards recovery and stabilization
Syria faces serious challenges in the aftermath of the fall of the Assad regime a year ago, including rebuilding its economy, lifting refugees and civilians out of poverty, and preventing a resurgence of Daesh terrorism.
But experts in two panel discussions during a conference at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, attended by Arab News, agreed that US President Donald Trump had so far taken all the right steps to help the war-torn nation move toward recovery and stabilization.
One of the discussions explored the effects American policies are having on the rebuilding of Syria, including the lifting of sanctions and efforts to attract outside investments and stabilize the economy. Moderated by the institute’s vice president for policy, Kenneth Pollack, the participants included retired ambassadors Robert Ford and Barbara Leaf, and Charles Lister, a resident fellow at the institute.
The other discussion focused on the continuing economic hardships in Syria that could fuel terrorism, including a resurgence of Daesh. Moderator Elizabeth Hagedorn, of Washington-based Middle East news website Al-Monitor, was joined by Mohammed Alaa Ghanem of the Syrian American Council, Celine Kasem of Syria Now, and Jay Salkini from the US-Syria Business Council.
“As we went into a transitional era, US diplomacy took a back step for a while as the Trump administration came into office,” Lister noted during the first panel discussion.
Everyone has been “super skeptical” of where the new government led by President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former commander with the Syrian opposition forces, would lead the country, he said, but Trump had stepped up through policies and support.
“Frankly, I think in January none of us expected that President Donald Trump would be shaking hands with Ahmad Al-Sharaa” a few months later, he added.
“Despite the obvious challenges, this new (Syrian) government has to be engaged.”
The US had maintained strong ties to the Syrian Democratic Forces, and with Al-Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, Lister said, in the decade leading up to the collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Dec. 8, 2024.
“Of course, we’ve had 10 years of a superb partnership with the Syrian Democratic Forces, but they were a non-state actor not a sovereign government,” he continued.
“Now, we have a sovereign government that we could test, we can engage, and we can see where that goes. And in working through a sovereign government, there is no comparison that comes anywhere close to what we’ve seen on Syria.”
Lister praised Trump, saying: “I think a lot of that goes down to President Trump’s own kind of gut instinct of the way to do things.
“But there is a deeper, deeper government bench that has worked on this through Treasury and State and elsewhere. I think they all deserve credit for moving so rapidly and so boldly to give Syria a chance, as President Trump says.”
Ford said a key aspect of the process as Syria moves forward will be the removal of all sanctions imposed by the US against the Assad regime under the 2019 Caesar Act, an effort that is now underway in Congress.
He said Trump recognizes that the future of Syria and the wider Middle East lies in the hands of the Arab people, and has pursued policies based on “shared interests” including a “national security
strategy” to help the war-torn country shift away from extremism and violence toward a productive economy and safer environment for its people.
The Trump administration recognizes this reality, Ford added, and will “work on a practical level towards shared interests.”
However, he cautioned that “Syria is not out of the woods, by any stretch of the imagination” in terms of ensuring there is no resurgence of violence driven by desperate people burdened by the harsh economic realities in the country.
“If they can work with the Syrian government, and with more and more important regional actors as the United States retrenches — like Israel, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Egypt; it’s a long list — it will become more important,” Ford said.
“There is still a way for the Americans to work with all of them, even if we don’t have big boots on the ground, or if we’re not providing billions of dollars.”
Nonetheless, “America’s voice will still be heard,” he added, thanks to the interest Trump is taking in Syria.
Adopted by Congress six years ago, toward the end of Trump’s first term as president, the Caesar Act imposed wide-ranging sanctions on Syria, including measures that targeted Assad and his family in an attempt to ensure his regime would be held accountable for war crimes committed under its reign. The act was named after a photographer who leaked images of torture taking place in Assad’s prisons.
Lister noted that the removal of the US sanctions has been progressing at “record-breaking speeds.”
In pre-taped opening remarks to the conference, which took place at the institute’s offices in Washington, Adm. Brad Cooper, commander of the US Central Command, said the Trump administration’s priority in Syria is the “aggressive and relentless pursuit” of Daesh, while working on the integration of the Syrian Democratic Forces with the new Syrian government through American military coordination.
“Just to give an example, in the month of October, US forces advised, assisted and enabled Syrian partners during more than 20 operations against (Daesh), diminishing the terrorists’ attacks and export of violence around the world,” he said. “We’re also degrading their ability to regenerate.”
Cooper added that the issue of displacement camps in northeastern Syria must also be addressed. He said he has visited Al-Hawl camp four times since his first meeting with Al-Sharaa, “which reinforced my view of the need to accelerate repatriations.”
He continued: “The impact on displaced persons devastated by years of war and repression has been immense. As I mentioned in a late-September speech at the UN, continuing to repatriate displaced persons and detainees in Syria is both a humanitarian imperative and a strategic necessity.”
The US is working with Syrian forces to “supercharge” this effort, Cooper said, noting that the populations of Al-Hawl and Al-Roj camps have fallen from 70,000 to about 26,000.
The second panel discussion painted a very bleak picture of the economic challenges the Syrian people face, with the average income only $200-$300 a month, a level that the experts warned could push desperate people to violence just to survive.
The US-Syria Business Council’s Salkini said many major companies and factories that once operated in Syria had relocated to neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Turkiye.
“We’re looking at about 50 percent-plus unemployment,” he said. “Let me give you statistics on the wages: A factory worker today, his salary is $100-$300 a month. A farmer makes $75-$200 a month in salary. A manager (or) a private in the military makes $250 a month.
“So you can imagine how these people are living on these low wages, and still have to buy their iPhone, their internet, pay for electricity.”
Many displaced people are unable to return to their former homes, the panelists said, because they were destroyed during the war and there is no accessible construction industry to rebuild them.
The capital, Damascus, faces many challenges they added, and the situation is even worse in the country.
