Iran accused of raping political activists

Tajikistan News.Net
Friday 2nd October, 2009

Two Iranians who were taken into custody after demonstrations against the recent presidential election have claimed they were raped.

A man and a woman have made the claims in separate interviews with CNN in Turkey where they fled after they were released.

Ibrahim Sharifi, 24, a university student, joined thousands of people protesting the result of the June 12 election and claiming it was rigged.

On June 22nd, Sharifi told CNN, he was kidnapped, handcuffed, blindfolded, and stuffed into a car by three unknown men while walking home from language lessons at the Italian Embassy. He said they drove him to an unknown location, stripped him to his underwear and subjected him to beatings and mock executions alongside other male prisoners, all the time tightly blindfolded. This he said went on for several days.

"They took us and they put a noose around my neck in a way that I was forced to stand on my tiptoes, unable to breathe," Sharifi told CNN. "Somebody was constantly telling us: 'You have received the oral sentence to be hanged, we are just waiting for the written order.'"

On the fourth day of his detention, Sharifi says he yelled at his captors, "I said, if you want to kill us, go ahead. Why do you play such games with us? And the response was a kick in my stomach that made me fall."

"Then the guy told someone else, 'Take him and get him pregnant,'" Sharifi said. "They tied my hands to the wall and tied my legs, and then did that thing to me. While doing it, he was telling me, "You, who cannot even defend your you-know-what, you wanted to conduct a revolution?"

Sharifi told the network he blacked out during the rape and woke up later, handcuffed to a hospital bed. A day later, he said, his captors dumped him, blindfolded, on the side of a highway.

Maryam Sabri, 21, in a telephone interview with CNN from a city in Turkey, said she was arrested by men in plainclothes on July 30th while attending a ceremony at the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman who was shot during a protest in Tehran.

"When I asked them where was I being taken to, why have you arrested me, who are you?" their response was a constant slap on my face," Sabri said.

She was repeatedly questioned and on one occasion one of her captors said, 'OK, you wanted your vote back? Now I'm going to give back your vote..

"It was then that I was raped. Raped four times," she said.

"My hands were tied and my eyes were blindfolded. He threw me on the ground while pressing my throat with one hand, and both my legs were under the weight of his legs so I couldn't move at all."

Sabri told CNN the final time she was raped, her captor took off her blindfold and said he would release her subject to her remainign in contact with him, and "co-operating."

Days after her release the man kept ringing her mobile phone making threats.

She fled Iran some weeks later and like Sharifi, applied for UN refugee status in Turkey.

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