The head of a United Nations investigation said on Monday that an Israeli airstrike on Tehran’s Evin prison last June was a war crime, while warning that the current US-Israeli bombing campaign risks intensifying domestic repression inside Iran.

Sara Hossain, chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, told the UN Human Rights Council that her investigation had found reasonable grounds to believe Israel had committed the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against a civilian object. She said 80 people were killed in the strike, including one child and eight women. Iranian authorities had previously said more than 70 people died when Israel struck the facility last June during an air war with Iran.

Evin prison, which is known for holding political prisoners, has also sustained damage in the latest round of US-Israeli strikes, raising fears for detainees including a British couple. UN-appointed rights expert Mai Sato voiced concern about prisoners rounded up during mass protests in January, saying families had been unable to contact relatives and that food and medicines were in increasingly short supply inside prisons.

Hossain’s report, based on interviews with victims and witnesses, satellite imagery and other documents, cautioned that external military action did not deliver accountability or meaningful change. “Instead, it risks intensifying domestic repression,” she said, pointing to a rise in executions following last year’s strikes.

Israel has disengaged from the Human Rights Council and left its seat empty. There was no immediate response to requests for comment from the prime minister’s office, the foreign ministry or the military.

Iran’s ambassador, Ali Bahreini, called for condemnation of the US-Israeli strikes, which he said had killed more than 1,300 people in Iran.

(Reuters)