The Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen claimed responsibility for a missile attack on an Israeli-owned oil tanker in the Red Sea on Sunday after the killing of its prime minister and other cabinet members.
The judiciary has accelerated death sentences since Israel struck the prison on June 23.
Human rights lawyers said the attack gave judges a pretext for vengeance.
“A spirit of vengeance has taken over the judiciary,” one Tehran lawyer, who asked not to be named, told the Times.
“A judge told me: ‘Our generals and officials have been killed, and we should take revenge.’ He didn’t even allow me to speak.”
Motahareh Gounei, a 28-year-old dental student arrested for criticizing the state, survived the bombing in Ward 209. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’m dead. I’ll be buried here,’” she said in a phone interview after being released on bail.
Rights groups say many of those now marked for execution were jailed for protest activity, not espionage, and their cases rest on confessions extracted under torture.
Asghar Jahangir, spokesperson for the Islamic Republic’s judiciary, announced on June 29 that in the Israeli attack on Evin Prison, 71 people were killed.
“The casualties included administrative staff, soldiers, inmates, family members who had come for visits or legal follow-ups, and neighbors living near the prison,” he said.
From ‘Evin University’ to collective punishment
Evin has long been notorious for torture yet also carried symbolic weight for the opposition. Political detainees staged hunger strikes, organized discussions and even confronted judges visiting the prison. It became known among activists as Evin University.
That fragile space was erased by the airstrike. The following day, authorities transferred 61 women to Qarchak, a facility notorious for disease and overcrowding.
“Since we were transferred to Qarchak, we’ve lost the right to work in workshops and to cover our living expenses. That means we can no longer buy groceries and are forced to eat the prison’s food, which is mostly plain rice,” one inmate said in a monitored call.
Gounei was later moved to an intelligence-run safe house. “Your name isn’t recorded anywhere,” she said. “My interrogator told me: ‘I’ll rape you and dump your body in the desert.’”
Rising executions
Iran Human Rights, an NGO, recorded 511 executions in the first five months of 2025, nearly double the same period last year. The judiciary has announced 700 arrests for alleged espionage during the war, vowing to show “no mercy.”
Male inmates from Evin have also faced brutality. About 500 transferred prisoners were returned in chains and beaten by riot police. Roughly 100 condemned prisoners were separated from the rest, including Mohammad-Bagher Bakhtiar, a 67-year-old former Revolutionary Guard commander turned dissident.
His son, Ali Reza, said: “Since the transfer to Evin, due to lack of access to medical staff, the full extent of the injuries to my father and other detainees is still unknown.”
Israel said its strikes on Evin aimed at guards and were designed to embolden the opposition. Officials accused Tehran of exploiting the attack to justify executions while presenting the war as a domestic victory.
Houthi military spokesman Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree made the announcement in a prerecorded message aired on al-Masirah, a Houthi-controlled satellite news channel.
Maritime security firm Ambrey said the Liberian-flagged Scarlet Ray, owned by Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping, controlled by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer, fits the Houthis’ targeting profile “as the vessel is publicly Israeli owned”.
The Houthis started attacking vessels in the Red Sea region in November 2023. The group has since launched scores of drones and missiles towards Israel in addition to targeting around 100 international ships, resulting in the sinking of four vessels and the deaths of at least eight mariners, according to the Associated Press figures.
The attack in the crucial shipping route comes just hours after the Yemeni militia raided offices of the UN’s food, health and children’s agencies in Yemen’s capital, detaining at least 11 employees, as the rebels tightened security across Sana’a after the Israeli killing of their prime minister and several cabinet members.
Hans Grundberg, the UN envoy for Yemen, said on Sunday: “I strongly condemn the new wave of arbitrary detentions of UN personnel today in Sana’a and Hodeidah … as well as the forced entry into UN premises and seizure of UN property.”
He demanded that they be “immediately and unconditionally” released.
The Houthis have previously detained dozens of UN workers in Yemen and others linked to aid groups, leading the UN to suspend its operations in the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen after the rebels detained eight UN staff members in January.
The raids on Sunday followed the killing of the Houthi prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, and several of his cabinet members in an Israeli strike on Thursday, which the group said will be met with retaliatory action.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards warned that the response will be wider than simply its allies in Yemen, branding the killings a "war crime against humanity ... with full US support".
“It will ignite greater anger and expand the geography of resistance," the statement said.
