By Emma Farge
GENEVA, March 16 (Reuters) - The head of a U.N. investigation said on Monday that an Israeli air strike on a prison last year was a war crime, and warned of risks of further repression following the current U.S.-Israeli bombings.
More than 70 people were killed when Israel struck Tehran's Evin prison last June during an air war with Iran, Iranian authorities have said. The jail, known for holding political prisoners, has also been damaged in the latest U.S.-Israeli air strikes, raising
fears for the detainees, who include a British couple.
"We found reasonable grounds to believe that, in carrying out the airstrikes on Evin prison, Israel committed the war crime of intentionally directing attacks against a civilian object...," Sara Hossain, chair of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, told the U.N. Human Rights Council. She said 80 people including one child and eight women had been killed.
Her latest report, based on interviews with victims and witnesses, satellite imagery and other documents, was presented to the Council on Monday.
Israel has disengaged from the council, which documents abuses and conducts investigations, 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.
Hossain condemned mounting civilian deaths in Iran and voiced concerns that the current bombing campaign could lead Iran to crack down even harder on dissent, pointing to an increase in executions after last year's strikes.
"The core lesson drawn from our investigations in this context is clear: external military action does not provide accountability or bring meaningful change. Instead, it risks intensifying domestic repression ... ," she said.
Mai Sato, a U.N.-appointed rights expert on Iran, also voiced concern about detainees, including those rounded up during mass protests in January. Families have not been able to contact relatives, and food and medicines are in increasingly short supply in prisons, she said.
Iran's ambassador, Ali Bahreini, called for condemnation of the U.S.-Israeli strikes, which he said had killed more than 1,300 people in Iran.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; Additional reporting by Steven Scheer in Jerusalem; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
