larasetrakian

Reporting from the Middle East 
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A Protester's Purported Account of Rape in Detention

A difficult to verify account I received by email two weeks ago, one of several I've seen describing rape or sexual assault in state detention. Mehdi Karroubi has publicly accused the security establishment of raping detained Iran election protesters. The allegations have been denied by the conservative establishment, including Majles Speaker Ali Larijani. NYT article from Aug 13 on the back and forth: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/world/middleeast/13iran.html
 
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Tonight I went to visit the friend I told you about. She described her ordeal as much as she could but she was so distressed that she could not really talk about what had happened. She badly wants to forget the nightmare. I thought maybe you would like to know her story, please excuse the ugly language that I will use here, but this is exactly what she recounted:

"I was standing in the square (baharestan) I was watching the crowd. All of a sudden a filthy bearded guy appeared in front of me and said, "what the hell are you doing here?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Let me see your purse."

Inside my purse he found my camera.

He took me and forced me into a minibus.

They immediately tied something around my eyes and started hitting me with all their might. When the minibus started moving they took out their electric baton and would keep it on my body for 4-5 seconds till it made me have epileptic-like fits.

Then they took me to a villa. The tied our hands in the back and told us to kneel on the ground like in prayer (for 12 hours they kept us like that!)

The interrogator entered the room and said, "You take Mousavi’s side??? He, whose wife was a whore before the revolution, Yes?? Now I will show you.

During the interrogation (lets not get into how much they molested us) I was one of the lucky ones, when they interrogated the girl next to me the guy had his hand up her underwear.

A pretty girl who was there was taken to another room the minute they saw her!

They also tortured us mentally. They had put a chair there and had connected it to electricity. They asked, "Who paid you to come out and demonstrate?" There was a noise from the electrically charged chair, "tell me who your bosses are or I will have you for the night. In the end they made us sign a paper blind folded. It was 4:30 a.m. when they took, us to a square in the south of Tehran and let us go and asked us to open our blind folds in five minutes.

Comments (8)

Aug 13, 2009
rahul said...
how do they walk free doing all these sins god will punish them but what are we human beings doing
Aug 13, 2009
Whizzbizz said...
If humanity doesn't stop this EVERYWHERE, we don't deserve to be called by this name.
Aug 13, 2009
Nima said...
If you can read Persian you can find similar horrific stories in some of the famous Iranian journalists' blogs.
Aug 13, 2009
Fred said...
This is a disgrace to humanity. The entire world MUST rise up to protest.
Aug 13, 2009
Saleh said...
All of these claims is a lie !!
Aug 14, 2009
Saleh's husband said...
Saleh, how many times have I told you to take your psychiatric medicine before you post something on the internet? Sorry everyone for my wife's comments. I guess she figured out the password to our computer. I try to keep her from ridiculing herself on the net, but she just can't help herself.
Aug 14, 2009
neda said...
no! this is not a lie!
im iranian! i know they can do what ever they want! and they do!!
Aug 16, 2009
Saleh said...
My wife, please shut up !
I'm quite good.
And to say that all these reports & claims is a lie
My wife, Do not post without my permission ,after this.
OK?

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