Iran’s secret police raids homes of striking bus drivers

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Feb. 02 – Agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the country’s secret police, have been conducting night raids into the homes of striking bus drivers and workers in Tehran in recent days, arresting hundreds of union activists and, in some cases, detaining family members to blackmail strikers.
Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Feb. 02 – Agents of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), the country’s secret police, have been conducting night raids into the homes of striking bus drivers and workers in Tehran in recent days, arresting hundreds of union activists and, in some cases, detaining family members to blackmail strikers.

Iran Focus has learnt from sources in Tehran that the number of prisoners being held inside the notorious Evin Prison in the Iranian capital has risen sharply in recent days.

“More than a thousand people arrested over the past week on political charges have been brought to Evin”, a dissident worker who requested anonymity said in a telephone interview.

“Most are being held in Evin’s ward 209, which is run by the secret police”, he added.

On Saturday, clashes erupted between Tehran’s transit workers and State Security Forces as large numbers of bus drivers who had planned to go on strike on the day were arrested.

All those taken to Evin Prison this week are being questioned several times in a rotating pattern, the source said.

Evin Prison was built by the Shah’s regime as a modern security prison to house political dissidents, but it became the Islamic Republic’s most dreaded gulag and the site of numerous political executions.