News

The son of an Iranian doctor who was killed after examining the rape victims of the country's 2009 unrest has spoken for the first time about the motives behind his father's assassination.

Abdolreza Soudbakhsh, a physician and professor at Tehran University, was shot dead by men on a motorcycle as he left his office last September. At the time of his assassination, Iranian officials denied his murder had anything to do with the cases of alleged rape in Kahrizak, a detention centre that Iran used to imprison many of the opposition activists caught up in the protests following the country's disputed presidential elections.

Many protesters are believed to have been tortured to death in Kahrizak and several have claimed they were raped. But the doctor's son Behrang Soudbakhsh said in an interview with Fereshteh Ghazi of Roozonline, an opposition website, that his father had indeed examined the rape victims of Kahrizak and was under pressure to remain silent about those who died under torture.

Kahrizak became a scandal for the regime when Mohsen Rouholamini, the son of a former senior advisor to the Revolutionary Guards, was named among prisoners who died in the centre.