April 17, 2014, has come to be known among Iranian dissidents as “Black Thursday.” On that day, at least 100 Iranian riot police, members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, soldiers, and officers of the Ministry of Intelligence and National Security joined prison guards in raiding Ward 350 of Tehran’s infamous Evin House of Detention. Numerous political prisoners and heterodox Muslims from the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi Sufi order are held at Evin.
Inmates of Ward 350 were assaulted brutally, with many injured seriously and their possessions destroyed, according to the Gonabadi-Nimatullahi website Majzooban Noor (The Alluring Light). Another Iranian opposition website, Kaleme, said the outburst by security personnel occurred during “an unprecedentedly long and aggressive inspection, [as] the prisoners protested.”
