Iran’s investigations into abuses are a sham, says Amnesty International
Times / James Hider
11-Dec-2009

Iranian security forces used rape, torture and mock executions in their campaign to crush anti-government protest this summer, an Amnesty International said today, citing a “climate of impunity” that has seen human rights in the country plunge to their lowest point in 20 years.

Amnesty said in a report that protesters were incarcerated in appalling conditions, raped and tortured into false confessions and sentenced to death after suspect show trials while official investigations into alleged abuses “seemed to have been more concerned with covering up abuses than getting at
the truth”.


Amnesty cited the case of Ebrahim Sharifi, a 24-year-old student from Tehran who was seized by plainclothes detectives during the June demonstrations and held incommunicado for weeks. Mr Sharifi said that he was bound, blindfolded and then beaten and raped, before being forced to undergo mock executions.


When he filed a complaint, secret policemen threatened him and his family, forcing him to go into hiding. An investigating committee later denounced his allegations as false and politically motivated.  


Authorities deployed the hardline Basij militia and the Revolutionary Guards to suppress the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who took to the streets to accuse the regime of rigging the presidential elections in favour of President Ahmadinejad. The reports says that the security forces “resorted to exceptionally h... >>>

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