At least 4 dead, 61 injured after fire at Iran's Evin Prison

Oct. 16 (UPI) -- At least four prisoners died and 61 were injured after a fire at Iran's notorious Evin prison, Iranian officials said Sunday.

Iran's state news agency IRNA said Sunday that the prisoners died of smoke inhalation after prisoners allegedly started a fire in the facility's sewing workshop during a riot in one wing of the prison.

Mohsen Mansouri, the governor of Tehran, previously told IRNA that eight people were injured and no deaths were reported.

Sources inside the prison told the BBC that the number of casualties is higher than what IRNA reported Sunday. Some families of prisoners told the outlet that their loved ones had not been able to contact them and that Internet connection around the prison had been cut off.

The U.S.-based Center for Human Rights said in a statement that people were protesting early Sunday near the prison as families of prisoners who had traveled to the facility to inquire about their loved ones were met with teargas fired by state security forces.

Streets and highways leading to the prison, where the fire erupted Saturday night, were blocked and the facility was made completely inaccessible, the organization said, calling on the Iranian regime to contact the families of prisoners and their lawyers to inform them that their loved ones and clients are safe.

"Preventable tragedies are occurring over and over again in the Islamic Republic as it kills, maims and detains innocent people with impunity to quell ongoing protests and force the Iranian people into submission," it said.

Among those at the facility was Siamak Namazi, the Iranian-American businessman, who was detained by Iran in 2015 and sentence to 10 years in prison on charges the United States has disregarded as "baseless."

His lawyer, Jared Genser, said Saturday that Namazi was safe and "has been moved to a secure area" of the prison.

On Sunday, Genser reported that Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had transferred his client to solitary confinement after the fires broke out, allegedly for his protection.

"For Siamak Namazi to be back w/the IRGC in solitary is a living nightmare," he tweeted, calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to act without delay to bring Namazi back to the United Staes.

"He spent 2 years being tortured there. Iran says it wants a hostage deal -- so it is safest he be given a furlough & ankle monitor so be can be safe. To keep him with the IRGC is inexplicably cruel."

Tehran's prosecutor Ali Salehi told Iranian state broadcaster IRIB that the prison riot was not connected with anti-regime protests that have gripped Iran since Mahsa Amini, 22, died when she was detained by the country's so-called morality police for allegedly not wearing her hijab properly.

Gunshots and explosions could be seen and heard in video footage from social media published by the BBC, which reported that the prison appeared to have been hit by an object fired from outside the prison -- seemingly contradicting Mansouri's account.

Ned Price, the spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said late Saturday that officials are following reports from the prison "with urgency."

The Oslo-based Iran Human Rights organization issued a statement calling for an international mechanism be urgently founded under the United Nations to investigate the facts behind the fire and to hold those responsible to account.

The organization said that based on Iran's history of "concealing facts" and "mass prison killings" it rejects the officials account of the situation.

It also said special forces were deployed to the prison without any explanation and that it has received reports that some political and regular criminal prisoners were beaten with batons.

"It's more necessary than ever to establish an independent mechanism under the supervision of the United nations to investigate the killing of protesters and events at Evin and other prisons, and prosecute the perpetrators," said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of Iran Human Rights. "This mechanism must be established before a bigger tragedy occurs."