Sayeh Seydal, a jailed Iranian dissident, narrowly escaped death when Israeli missiles struck Tehran’s Evin Prison, where she was imprisoned. She had just stepped out of the prison’s clinic, moments before it was destroyed in the blasts.

The June 23 strikes on Iran’s most notorious prison for political dissidents killed at least 71 people, including staff, soldiers, visiting family members, and people living nearby, Iranian judiciary spokesman Asghar Jahangir claimed Sunday. In the ensuing chaos, authorities transferred Seydal and others to prisons outside of Tehran — overcrowded facilities, known for their harsh conditions.

When she was able to call her family several days ago, Seydal pleaded for help.

“It’s literally a slow death,” she said of the conditions, according to a recording of the call provided by her relatives, in accordance with Seydal’s wishes.

“The bombing by the US and Israel didn’t kill us. Then the Islamic Republic brought us to a place that will practically kill us,” she said.

Iran’s pro-democracy and rights activists fear they will pay the price for Israel’s 12-day air campaign aiming to cripple the country’s nuclear program. Many now say the state, reeling from the breach in its security, has already intensified its crackdown on opponents.

Israel’s strike on Evin — targeting, it said, “repressive authorities” — spread panic among families of the political prisoners, who were left scrambling to determine their loved ones’ fates. A week later, families of those who were in solitary confinement or under interrogation still haven’t heard from them.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi, a veteran activist who has been imprisoned multiple times in Evin, said that Iranian society, “to get to democracy, needs powerful tools to reinforce civil society and the women’s movement.”

“Unfortunately, war weakens these tools,” she said in a video message to The Associated Press from Tehran.

Many now fear a potential wave of executions targeting activists and political prisoners. They see a terrifying precedent: After Iran’s war with Iraq ended in 1988, authorities executed at least 5,000........

© The Times of Israel