Published on: 12 August 2023
DOHI NEWS
Gohardasht Prison (also known as Rajai Shahr Prison) is a name synonymous with torture, rape and murder. Nonetheless, the systemic executions and brutal interrogations of prisoners of conscience and former members of the overthrown monarchical government committed after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has only added to its well-established notoriety.
Estimates from former Iranian officials and human rights groups state that authorities executed in total between 2,800 to 30,000 political prisoners in 32 prisons throughout the country, including Gohardasht.
According to recent reports from inside Iran, the clerical regime has been hastily moving thousands of prisoners out of the prison to other detention centers in the surrounding area.
Human rights organizations fear that this closure is part of a move by the country’s leadership to eliminate evidence of past atrocities (a.k.a. crimes against humanity), the evidence of which surely lies on or around the prison’s premises.
During the prosecution of Hamid Noury, a former Gohardasht prison guard, in the Stockholm District Court in Sweden in November 2019, concrete details of crimes against humanity were disclosed by witnesses and used as judicial evidence at trial.
Persecuted Christians that we have asked you to pray for over the years spent time in Gohardasht, including Farshid Fathi and Ebrahim Firouzi.
Farshid, who was first arrested in 2010 in a raid on house-churches across the country, was first held in Tehran’s Evin Prison and then moved to Gohardasht Prison.
Ebrahim Firouzi went on a ten-day hunger strike in Godhardasht to protest the mistreatment his fellow Christian inmates.
Godhardasht Prison is located approximately 20 km west of Tehran.
