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Printed November 01,2009 01:42 0mAEDT
Ahmadinejad's Basiji run a regime of rape, murder to suppress critics
Marlin Fletcher and a special correspondent, Tehran I September 19,2009
Article from: The Australian
ON July 8, a young student was arrested in Tchran for protesting against President lVlahmoud Ahmadincjad's disputed re-election. T ue security forces dubbed Aissir
Javadifar, 24,so badly that he was treated in hospital before being taken to the notorions Evin prison. His father was later called and told to collect his corpse.
The security forces ordered his family to say that he had died of a pre-existing condition but medical reports show that he had been beaten, sustaining several broken bones, and had his toenalls
pulled out. “My son was not involved in polities. He loved his motherland - that's all,” said Javadifar's reeenliy widowed father. “I alone mourn him.”
Javadifar is just one among scores of alleged cases of murder, torture and rape unearthed by opposition investigators - cases that a regime claiming to champion Islamic values is doing its utmost to
suppress by denouncing the charges as lies, arresting the investigators and seizing their files. The Times has been given access to 500 pages of documents - a small fraction of the total - that include
handwritten testimony by victims, medical reports and interviews.
They suggest that security forces have engaged in systematic killing and torture to try to break the opposition.
“The use of rape and torture was similar across prisons in Tehran and the provinces. It is difficult not to conclude that the highest authorities planned and ordered these actions. Local authorities
would not dare take such actions without word from above,” wrote one investigator, in a coded reference to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mi Khamenei.
Mehdi Karoubi, 72,a defeated presidential candidate, sald: “These crimes are a source of shame for the Islamic republic.”
Western non-governmental organisations said the documents corroborated what they were hearing from fran, from where foreign journalists have been banned.
The documents suggest at least 200 demonstrators were killed in Tebran; 56 others are still unaccounted for, and 173 were killed in other cities. These are several times higher than the official
figures. Just over half of the 200 were killed on the streets. They were beaten around the head or shot in the head or chest as part of an apparent shoot-to-kill policy - there are no reports of
demonstrators being shot in the legs.
Yscob Barvaye, 27, a student, was shot by llasiji militiamen from the top of the Lolagar mosque in Tehrsn on June 25, according to witnesses. Friends rushed him to hospital but be died of a brain
haemorrhage. His family were standing over his body when the llasiji arrived and removed it. Two days later they called the family to say where they had buried it
Mi Reza Tavasoli, 12, became separated from his father at a demonstration in the llehesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran commemorating the murder of Neda Soltan, the young woman whose
videotaped death made her an opposition icon. His family stated that he had been killed in a car accident, but two doctors and a police officer have since testified that he died from blows to the head
and that llasijis removed his body from the hospital.
His aunt says his impoverished parents were given the equivalent of $US2000 ($2300) to lie about the boy's death.
The rest of Tehran's 200 known victims died in custody - detalnees such as Amir Hossein Tufanian, 31. who was arrested on June 20 and taken to the Kahrizak detention centre. After his death, the
police allegediy demanded that his family should pay thousands of dollars for his body, which bore marks of torture and had two broken arms. When the family protested that they had no money,
they were told they could have his corpse free if they made no fuss.
In three quarters of the cases, the victims' families were told nothing about thetr whereabouts and were denied permission to hold proper funerals. The opposition claims that dozens were buried in
unmarked graves in llehesbt-e Zahrs cemetery.
Mahmoud Rezayan, the cemetery chief, said coroners had certified that the bodies were those of unknown people who died in car aeridents or from drug overdoses. The documents contain
coroners' statements denying that.
The documents also suggest that a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons has been set up across fran where rape and torture are common practice. In Tebran alone, 37 young men and women claim
to have been raped by their jailers. Doctors' reports say that two males, aged 17 and 22, died as a result of internal bleeding after being raped. Many of the male rape victims also spoke of beatings,
being subjected to sexual humiliation induding riding naked colleagues, and living in their underwear.
“Where is the humanity among these agents?” one investigator scribbled on a document.
Female rape victims were mostiy held for days, not weeks, like the men. Some sald that their jailers claimed to have “religious sanction” to violate them as they were “morally dirty”.
The documents detail other systematic abuses: violent raids on student dormitories, attacks on the homes of suspected opposition sympathisers and the widespread intimidation of medics. They cite
instances of security forces storming hospitals and ordering doctors not to treat injured demonstrators, not to record deaths by gunshot and to suppress medical reports indicating rape or torture.
Early last week, security forces ralded offices of Mr Karoubi and Mir Hosseio Mousavi, the other main opposition candidate, and seized much of their evidence.
On Saturday a three-man panel set up by the head of the judiciary to investigate Mr Karoubi's charges claimed that they were fabricated.
Undaunted, Mr Karoubi said on Monday that the attacks “show that I have hit on something extremely damaging to a number of political figures”.
He continued: “There are no few stories about the rape of girls and boys in prison. I say to myself three decades after the revolution and two decades after the death of the Imam (Ayatollah
Khomeini) - what place have we reached?”
The Thezea
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