Former hostage Louis Arnaud discusses life in Evin jail – and his fears for Iran’s future

[ad_1] Iranian authorities arrested Louis Arnaud in 2022, accusing him of “propaganda” and threatening state safety by participating in protests. His household denied the fees, saying he “stored his distance” from public demonstrations whereas visiting Iran as a vacationer.

His arrest got here amid a crackdown on the "Girls, Life, Freedom" motion – widespread anti-government protests sparked by the loss of life of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for carrying a hijab incorrectly and died in police custody.

Arnaud spent practically two years in Evin jail, the place most of the regime’s opponents are incarcerated – together with political prisoners, lecturers and activists – in addition to overseas nationals accused of espionage or distributing propaganda.

The jail has, for many years, been a logo of brutal repression, with detainees dealing with routine bodily and psychological torture and the fixed risk of abstract execution or compelled disappearance.

US and Israeli strikes on Iran this week have introduced new risks and made prisoners one of many nation’s most at-risk teams.

Arnaud, creator of "La Révolution intérieure" (The Inner Revolution), spoke to FRANCE 24 about his fears that the Iranian regime will use the battle to crack down even tougher on prisoners in a bid to rid itself of inside enemies.

FRANCE 24: Human rights teams are reporting that the battle in Iran has positioned prisoners in nice hazard – for instance, that they not being supplied with meals and are being refused shelter throughout Israeli and US strikes. Can your expertise put this in context, notably what day by day life is like there?

Louis Arnaud: I used to be held in Ward 209, the Iranian intelligence service’s high-security wing in Evin jail for political prisoners. And it was a slaughterhouse.

Folks have been thrown into cells with out home windows, with out beds, stripped of all the things, residing underneath lights that by no means exit, blurring the notion of time. We have been barely fed sufficient.

After which there was the humiliation and torture to pressure you to admit what they've determined to make you confess to.

French citizen Louis Arnaud flanked by his mom and father upon arrival at Le Bourget airport north of Paris on June 13, 2024, after his launch from custody in Iran. © LCI tv display screen seize by way of AFP On high of this, Iran has a historical past of ramping up its violence within the context of any battle. The regime will increase its mistreatment, violence and even executions underneath the guise of exterior occasions equivalent to a warfare. That is what occurred throughout the Iran-Iraq warfare, when tens of hundreds of prisoners have been executed, many outdoors of any authorized framework.

And the good concern in the present day is precisely that – that executions of political prisoners shall be carried out secretly, with out notifying their households, in order that the Iranian public can't react and is offered with a fait accompli.

There's additionally concern that political prisoners and customary regulation prisoners shall be topic to executions, abuse, violence and mistreatment, which is even worse than normal to frighten the inhabitants.

It’s a method for the regime to terrorise its individuals – significantly at this second in time – as a result of the regime's nice concern is that the inhabitants will use this warfare to stand up once more because it did in January.

So prisoners at the moment are extra weak than ever?

Completely, as a result of the warfare is a chance for the regime to do away with its opponents. It has already used any such alternative prior to now.

The regime is totally neglecting the prisoners who're trapped, who cannot get out and discover shelter [during air strikes]. Residents of the realm surrounding Evin jail have been advised to hunt shelter, to evacuate the realm so far as doable, which is clearly not doable for the prisoners.

The identical factor occurred throughout the Israeli-US 12-day warfare on Iran. The neighbourhood round Evin was bombed together with the jail itself, and prisoners have been injured or killed within the bombardments whereas members of the jail administration had already fled.

Watch extra No less than 71 killed in Israel's assault on Tehran's Evin jail

Right now we're advised that some members of the jail administration have already left and that the jail is within the arms of an unknown police pressure whose motives and targets are unknown.

Worse nonetheless, there may be this large concern that the prisoners have truly been moved with a view to utilizing them as human shields, to forestall sure Revolutionary Guard targets from being attacked.

The clinic constructing of the Evin jail sits broken in Tehran, Iran, on June 29, 2025, after an Israeli strike. © Vahid Salemi, AP What was it like residing among the many political prisoners in Evin? Who have been they?

I hung out with political prisoners in Evin throughout the "Girls, Life, Freedom" motion for the primary three months of my detention. I blended with individuals from all walks of life – staff, bricklayers, college students, docs, poets, artists – who had risen up throughout this motion as a result of they have been on the peak of despair. They have been suffocating from a scarcity of freedom or dignity.

The individuals who rose up at the moment are the identical individuals who rose up once more in January and have been massacred.

Within the second a part of my detention, I met long-term political prisoners – individuals serving sentences of 5, 10, 20 and typically 30 years – who had already possibly served 10 years in jail. A few of these individuals may even have been a part of the 1979 revolution and been in jail underneath the Shah’s earlier regime, then returned to jail throughout the political purges in the beginning of the Islamic Republic.

These persons are the mental elite of the nation. They're college students from the perfect universities, they're sociologists, political scientists, defenders of human rights like Narges Mohammadi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize whereas we have been in jail.

Learn extra Iran sentences Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi to 6 years in jail

They have been guiding lights who have been locked up in jail. They've absolutely the integrity to proceed their combat from jail, despite the fact that they're underneath monumental stress to offer in.

They usually took me in as one in all their very own and have turn into my household. And it is these people who find themselves in the present day nonetheless on the entrance traces towards the regime that wishes to make use of this chance to get rid of them.

Are you in touch with anybody in Iran in the intervening time?

No, not within the prisons or in Iran as a result of web and communications have been lower off for greater than 72 hours.

You continue to have very robust hyperlinks with Iran and Iranians. Concerning the present battle, do you primarily really feel concern, or are there some indicators of hope for the way forward for the nation?

We've got to know that Iranians have reached an unimaginable degree of despair.

For 47 years they've been imprisoned, tortured and massacred for wanting just a little dignity, just a little freedom. They've risen up once more, and once more, and once more, and lately greater than 30,000 individuals have been slaughtered for this in simply 12 days.

Learn extra ‘As in wartime’: Iranian docs recount lethal crackdown on protesters

There's immense trauma. Everybody is aware of at the very least one one that has died.

And so Iranians have come to say to themselves, ‘We haven't any different however to be bombed. We have come to need them to drop bombs on us. And possibly we'll die. However, truly, it makes no distinction whether or not we die from the mullah’s bullets or American bombs.’

Iranians are one of the crucial educated populations on the earth and essentially the most educated inhabitants within the Center East. They're completely conscious that the People and the Israelis have a special agenda to their very own, however they've been lowered to such despair.

It’s completely tragic, as a result of it signifies that these persons are lowered to hoping that these strikes will weaken the regime sufficient for them to grab their future.

And something is doable. However in the present day, sadly, I am reasonably pessimistic about what is going on to occur.

We hear Donald Trump say America will care for the ballistic missiles and the nuclear weapons as a result of they're a risk, then it is as much as the Iranian individuals to make use of their freedom and seize their establishments in the event that they want. On the finish of the day, the worldwide army capabilities of the Revolutionary Guards might have been weakened, however they do not want a lot to bloodbath their inhabitants.

And they're completely prepared to do this. They haven't any need to relinquish energy. There's a local weather of hatred in Iran following the January massacres. And for the Revolutionary Guards, it is kill or be killed.

What I concern most is that, as soon as the Israeli-American intervention is over and their army targets have been achieved, there shall be one other massacre in Iran.