This article first appeared on our partner site, Independent Persian
Video seen by Independent Persian this week shows the main building of Police Station 140 in Baghe Feiz, western Tehran, completely destroyed. The footage reveals the roof of the central sections collapsed, the walls of the upper floors torn open, and only a few concrete columns of the main structure still standing.
The blast appears to have been so powerful that much of the main building was destroyed and the surrounding compound also sustained damage.
The attack came as part of a broader wave of strikes targeting police facilities in Tehran. Information received by Independent Persian indicates that over the past three days – in addition to Police Station 140 – police stations 104 Abbasabad, 109 Baharestan, 113 Bazaar-15 Khordad, 121 Pirouzi, 133 Shahr-e Ziba, 138 Jannatabad, 131 Shahr-e Rey, 153 Shahrak-e Vali-Asr, 158 Kianshahr, 139 Marzdaran, and 151 Yaftabad were also struck by missiles and completely destroyed.
For many protesters in Tehran, however, the Baghe Feiz police station was not merely a law-enforcement facility.
It had become a well-known centre of violent arrests and the first place where many experienced the state’s security apparatus.
A 32-year-old man who was detained during protests in the national uprising earlier this year on 8 January 2026 said that after being arrested in western Tehran, he was taken to this police station.
He told Independent Persian: “They beat me so badly that even after two months I still can’t walk properly. They broke my legs. They gave me no medical care. They just kept saying I had to confess.”
According to the man, the beatings began in the first hours after his arrest, and he was denied access to a lawyer or any contact with his family.
He also said that many of the special police units who fired on protesters in the Punak area on the nights of 8 and 9 January would return to the same police station in Baghe Feiz after their operations.
“A lot of our friends were killed that night,” he said. “Some of those who were taken away never came back. When I saw that this building had collapsed, it felt like part of that nightmare had collapsed too.”
Paria, a 27-year-old woman who lives in the Punak neighbourhood, says her first arrest dates back to 2020, when she was only 21. She said she was detained for what authorities described as “improper hijab” and was taken to Police Station 140.
“They kept us in the station’s courtyard,” she recalled. “There were both male and female officers. They insulted us, pushed us and hit us. They humiliated us. I felt like there was no law at all.”
According to her, both the courtyard and the interior rooms of the station were designed to create an atmosphere of intimidation and psychological pressure for detainees.
She said her father, who came to secure her release that same night, was also met with humiliation and insults.
“They humiliated my father in front of me,” she recalled. “For me, that place was a torture chamber.” Paria said families had long heard stories that young people taken from this police station were later transferred elsewhere and, weeks later, faced security charges or heavy judicial sentences.
A 45-year-old man also recounted being arrested outside the same police station in 2008 for possessing a homemade bottle of alcohol (raisin aragh).
“We weren’t even drunk,” he said. “It was just one bottle. They beat us until morning. Then we went to court and each of us was sentenced to three months in prison.”
He added that throughout the station’s years of operation, its officers treated residents of Punak “violently and with humiliation”.
According to his account, he saw officers from the same police station in the Punak area once again opening fire on civilians during the protests in January this year.
“They were shooting pellet rounds and live ammunition,” he said. “They blinded some people and killed dozens at the Punak intersection.”
Independent Persian has previously reported on torture, deaths in custody, enforced disappearances, and secret executions in police stations and detention centres across Iran in recent weeks.
These reports illustrate a cycle of repression that began in the streets, continued in local police stations, and in some cases ended in larger detention facilities, torture, death and the secret transfer of bodies.
Many families say the first place they searched for their detained relatives was these police stations – visits that often ended in threats, humiliation or silence from authorities.
Against this backdrop, the targeting of Police Station 140 in Baghe Feiz is seen by some residents of Tehran and the Punak neighbourhood as more than the destruction of a building.
For many, it evokes memories of the first beatings, the first insults and the first hours of vulnerability after arrest – a place where street detentions often led to fabricated charges, psychological pressure and sometimes irreversible physical harm.
What collapsed in Baghe Feiz on the evening of Monday 2 March was therefore not just the walls of a police station, but one of the pillars of the Islamic Republic’s urban repression apparatus – a place that, in the memory of many protesters, was associated with years of violent arrests and humiliating treatment.
Reviewed by Tooba Khokhar and Celine Assaf
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