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Brave Iranian woman Donya Rad, acquaintance eat breakfast without headscarfs, promptly arrested

October 2, 2022 | | Print Article

A female Iranian photographer was reportedly arrested and tossed into a “notoriously brutal” prison after a photo of her and a friend dining at a restaurant in South Tehran without hijabs went viral on social media.

Speaking with CNN, photographer Donya Rad’s sister said that after the photo went viral, she was summoned by security agencies to explain her actions.

“After visiting the designated place she was arrested. After a few hours of no news, Donya told me in a short call that she was transferred to Ward 209 of Evin Prison,” Rad’s sister said.

CNN notes that “Tehran’s Evin Prison is a notoriously brutal facility where the regime incarcerates political dissidents and is exclusively designated for prisoners managed by Iran’s Intelligence Ministry.”

View the photo that got Rad in trouble below (she’s the one on the right):

According to Al Arabiya, Evin Prison is a horror show where “[h]uman rights activists say they have documented systematic abuses … including torture,” and death.

“Iranian – Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi died in Evin due to what her family said was an injury sustained during torture,” the Arabic news channel reported in 2015.

She died in 2003. Eleven years later in 2014, Evin made headlines again after prison guards responded aggressively to a protest by prisoners.

“Political prisoners and prisoners of conscience at Section 350 of Iran’s Evin prison were subjected to assault, beatings and other ill-treatment, with some of those injured denied access to adequate medical care,” according to a press release from Amnesty International published on May 15th, 2014.

“[D]ozens of prisoners were met with unwarranted use of force by security officials after they demanded to be present during a monthly search of their cells. Prisoners were blindfolded and handcuffed before being shoved through a ‘tunnel’ formed of security officials carrying batons, who repeatedly struck them on their backs, heads and faces.”

Produced in 2014, the below movie, “Rosewater,” tells the true story of an Iranian-Canadian journalist who was imprisoned in Evin for four months in 2009:

Dovetailing back to the 2014 protest, even a famous Kurdish journalist got beat up.

“The wife of prisoner of conscience Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, a Kurdish journalist serving an 11-year prison term, [said] that her husband was kicked and punched by guards so badly that he lost consciousness. When he awoke in the prison clinic he was unable to speak and was lying near a machine which was apparently a defibrillator, suggesting he may have suffered cardiac arrest,” according to Amnesty International.

“Some family members who were allowed to visit their relatives in prison on 21 April described what they witnessed as ‘shocking’ and ‘painful’. They reported seeing prisoners badly bruised and beaten. One father said his son was wearing a cervical collar and had an open gash on his head which needed stitches; he had reportedly also lost the hearing in his right ear possibly because of a blow to the head.”

Rad’s arrest comes only days after another Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, 22, allegedly died from torture while in the custody of Iran’s morality policy.

“Amini’s father said she was beaten by the morality police, the enforcers of Iran’s strict dress code. Amini’s head covering was reportedly too loose when she was taken into custody. Her cousin, Erfan Mortezaei, who lives in self-exile in Iraq, believes she was tortured,” according to CBS News.

“She was tortured, according to eyewitnesses,” he claimed. “She was tortured in the van after her arrest, then tortured at the police station for half an hour, then hit on her head and she collapsed,” Mortezaei said.

Others have since reportedly been killed just protesting her death:

Amini’s death in particular set off a wave of growing protests all across Iran. As of Sunday, the Iranian people were protesting for the third week in a row.

The protests have reportedly also spread to other countries.

“People also demonstrated in London, Rome, Madrid and other Western cities in solidarity with Iranian protesters, holding pictures of Amini, who died three days after being arrested by the Islamic Republic’s morality police for ‘unsuitable attire,'” Reuters reported.

In Iran, meanwhile, there have been large protests in Tehran, Isfahan, Rasht, and Shiraz, among other cities.

Look:

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Vivek Saxena
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