Over 100 Trans People Missing or “Presumed Dead” After Israel Bombs Iranian Prison

“The Israeli attack on Evin Prison — carried out in broad daylight, in front of families and visitors — is clearly a war crime,” says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi.

Picture: Mostafa Roudaki/mizanonline via AP

Over 100 transgender and gender nonconforming people incarcerated in Iran are missing and/or presumed dead—killed by an Israeli air strike, a human rights lawyer in the region told The New York Times. The targeted strike destroyed parts of Evin, a Tehran prison known for vicious human rights abuses and detention of political prisoners, in late June. The facility’s “trans ward” was reportedly flattened in the attack.

Israeli officials framed the mass slaughter of civilians—including human rights activists, medical staff, and nearby residents—as “somehow an act of liberation,” The Times reports.

It’s a telling example of Israel's fraught relationship with LGBTQ rights, one that is often deployed in order to justify massacres in the region.

“History shows that authoritarian regimes often use wars and external crises as a pretext to intensify repression at home,” a widely-shared statement reads, which was signed by almost two dozen high-profile Evin prisoners and ex-prisoners, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Narges Mohammadi. “The Israeli attack on Evin Prison—carried out in broad daylight, in front of families and visitors—is clearly a war crime.”

This stands in stark contrast with the image that Israel seeks to project to the world when it comes to LGBT rights: That the country is an “LGBTQ haven.” That the Israeli government is committed to “spreading the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy to the world.” That its military aggression is in service to, at least in part, the preservation of LGBTQ “love.”

In a 2024 article for The Society for Queer Studies, sociologist Izat Elamoor condemned Israel’s claims to LGBT allyship as incompatible with committing war crimes and other atrocities against them. “Israel exploits queer rights to project a progressive, queer-friendly image of itself,” Elamoor writes. But in its unrelenting assault on civilians, it “contradicts its avowal of being a beacon of queer rights” and human rights more broadly.

Over the course of twelve days in June, around 1,000 Iranians were killed by Israeli forces. By comparison, 28 Israelis have been killed by Iran in the same timeframe. The IDF has also bombed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen over the last few months. This is all in addition to Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine, where military operations have killed tens of thousands of people, largely women and children, since October 7, 2023.

The exact body count of the Evin bombing continues to grow by the day. Doctors and nurses in the hospital ward, as well as at least one young child, were also killed in the attack. We may never know all the names and identities of the dead, as the Iranian government has subsequently cracked down on families speaking out about lost loved ones. If any trans prisoners survived, it’s not immediately clear where they will be placed—in solitary, with other inmates, or with what gender. Nor do we know whether they will stay in Tehran or be transferred to somewhere farther away.