Iranian Prisons Under Pressure

Evin House of Detention (Wikipedia)

Iran’s prisons are buckling under the weight of the coronavirus pandemic. The strain began to show on March 3 when the judiciary announced plans to temporarily release 54,000 prisoners in order to slow the spread of the virus in its jails, reports BBC. By March 17, the number of furloughed prisoners had reached 85,000, including political detainees who just two weeks prior had been categorically denied release. Time reports that by the end of the month, only one-third of Iran’s former prison population remained behind bars.

However, recent unrest suggests that these drastic measures failed to ease the burden on the overcrowded prison system. In the city of Shiraz, inmates staged a riot on March 30 to protest conditions in the facility, according to Al Jazeera. Only two days before, 74 prisoners in the Kurdistan province escaped, beating several guards in the process. Al-Monitor reports that only 20 of the escapees have been located; the other 54 are non-violent offenders serving light sentences, fleeing not a life in prison but the threat of disease.

Ironically, the threat of coronavirus in Iranian prisons has been a blessing for high-profile political detainees. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British national arrested in 2016, was temporarily released on March 18 and allowed to return to her parents’ home in Tehran, reports Al Jazeera. Similarly, authorities granted Michael White, an American arrested almost two years ago, furlough on March 19, fearing that his ailing health would put him at a greater risk of succumbing to coronavirus, according to NBC. For now, the Swiss Embassy in Tehran is housing White, who, much like Zaghari-Ratcliffe, cannot leave the country. For these political prisoners, relief is temporary; they know all too well that the end of the pandemic may see them return to their cells. For thousands of other detainees in Iran facing the threat of the virus, relief may never come.