Twenty-seven prisoners were killed and 50 others injured as a massive fire swept through a prison in the city of Gorgan, in northeastern Iran, on Dec 30, 2002. According to the head Guardian of the prison, Abbasali Arab Saeed, the fire which was caused by an elctrical fault, started at 3:20 AM local time on Monday morning. He added that the victims who were convicted by local courts, aged between 20 and 69.He did not mention if the victims were convicted of political reasons. Since 1990, the Islamic regime of Iran has placed regular prisons in the same wards and prisons as political prisons cross the country.
It is necessary to be added that in a similar case, Ward 1 of Ghasser prison in Tehran, gutted in fire on 30 october 2002, one prisoner was killed and four others were injured. The Iranian prisons are not safe and equiped with first aids such as fire fighting. According to the head of the Iranian Prisons Organisation, Bakhtiari, the Iranian prisons are crowded as many as double.