Rights coups seek U.N. probe of Iran rape charges Reuters.com http://www.reuters.com /arfic lePrint?artic leld=USTRE58K312009092 1
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Rights groups seek U.N. probe of Iran rape
charges
Mon Sep 21, 2009 7:19pm EDT
By Joshua Schneyer
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Human rights groups urged the U.N. General
Assembly to appoint a special envoy to investigate abuses in Iran, alleging
detainees held after disputed elections there have been raped and tortured.
Iran has called the allegations baseless.
Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in
Iran on Monday said about 400 prisoners remained in custody for their
suspected involvement in election protests following the June 12 vote in
which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected.
The opposition says the poll was rigged.
As many as 72 Iranians have been killed by government forces since the
election, and several have been tortured and sexually abused, the groups
alleged in a news conference near United Nations headquarters.
“Member states of the United Nations should use (Ahmadinejad's) upcoming
visit to the U.N. General Assembly to address Iran's Human rights crisis,”
the groups said in a statement.
Ahmadinejad was due to address the U.N. General Assembly on
Wednesday, with several groups preparing to protest his presence at U.N.
headquarters in New York.
Ebrahim Sharifi, a 24 year-old computer science student from Tehran, said
he was among the prisoners questioned, beaten and raped by Iranian
interrogators during a harrowing week of detention in late June.
“He tied my hands to a handcuff that was connected to the wall, tied my
feet, and pulled down my underwear,” Sharifi said of his interrogator,
speaking to reporters by phone. “He then sexually assaulted me.”
Sharifi spoke from Turkey, where he fled last month after he said Iranian
intelligence officials threatened to kill his family.
The alleged sexual abuse of detainees has become an incendiary subject in
highly religious Iran. Defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karoubi is
among opposition members who have raised allegations that political
detainees are being abused.
Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani has received and dismissed at least 100
reports of sexual abuse carried out on political detainees, said Hadi
Ghaemi, a coordinator for the International Campaign for Human Rights in
Iran.
(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Cynthia Osterman)
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