Feminist Attorney Speaks Out Against Rape As a Weapon of Torture in Iran

Source: http://www.meydaan.com/Showarticle.aspx?arid=894
Translated by Frieda Afary (http://iranianvoicesintranslation.blogspot.com)

Shadi Sadr is a young feminist attorney and journalist who has been in the forefront of women’s rights struggles in Iran during the past few years. She was abducted by plainclothes police on July 17, and released eleven days later. She was arrested once before at a women’s rights demonstration in 2006. In this article dated August 14, 2009, she responds to Ayatollah Mehdi Karroubi’s open letter to Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani about the need to investigate the rapes of young protesters imprisoned after the forged June 2009 election. Sadr begins her article specifically with the case of Taraneh Mussavi, a young victim whose identity has been questioned by the Iranian government.

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Kidnapped and killed by security forces

Mohammad Naderi was kidnappaed by plain cloth security forces. His body was found after 48 hours in a veichle.

Reformist release names of 72 post-election victims, Iranian site says

By Samira Simone
CNN

(CNN) — An Iranian reformist Web site on Friday released the identities of 72 people it says were killed by government forces in the aftermath of Iran’s disputed presidential elections — in a defiant move that demands a response from the Islamic republic.

The list posted on Norooz News’ Web site is more than double government estimates, which put the death toll of protesters between 25 and 30. Norooz gives the names, ages and details surrounding most of the victims’ deaths, which range from being shot by members of the Basij militia to being beaten to death in Tehran’s Evin prison.

Iranian government officials did not immediately respond to the claims by Norooz and could not be immediately reached for comment during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Mothers gathering in Laleh agust 29

Secret graves in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- City officials in Tehran have agreed to investigate claims that bodies of protesters killed in the unrest that followed Iran's disputed presidential election were secretly buried in the nation's largest cemetery, Iranian media reported Sunday.

The city council has formed a committee to look into the allegations reported last week by a reformist news site, said council spokesman Khosrow Daneshjou, according to the Iranian Labor News Agency.

The charges against Iran's government are the latest by reformists who claim protesters arrested in the aftermath of the June 12 election were raped and tortured. The government rejected such reports, but still pledged to investigate them if there was evidence.

Last week, Norooz News reported that at least 28 people who died in the violence that followed the June 12 election were buried anonymously in Tehran's Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.
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Freelance journalist and blogger Fariba Pajooh has been arrested

more to come

Solidarity with mothers of Iran. Verona Italy

Solidarity with Iran´s mothers in Los Angeles, USA

Solidarity with Iran´s mothers in Frankfurt, Germany

Vigil in other cities

Last Saturday black dressed mothers gathered for third week in the park in Rasht, city located in north of Iran. They showed their tribute to victims of last months state violence by tying black ribbons in trees.

Mothers of Laleh, Mothers of Khavaran: MOTHERS OF IRAN

Bodies burried in secret

Norooz News:
42 bodies´ of protesters from Tehran who were killed in demonstrations was secretly buried 12 and 14 of July in section 302 of Beheshte Zahra cemetery outside Tehran.

40:th day memorial ceremony for Sohrab Aabi

Investigate Security Chiefs in Post-Election Abuse

Nature, Scale of Abuses Indicate Coordinated Efforts Ordered at Highest Levels
August 14, 2009

(New York) - The Iranian government should investigate the nation's top security officials to determine whether attacks on demonstrators and detainees following the disputed June 12, 2009 election were ordered and coordinated at the highest levels, Human Rights Watch said today.
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Argentine general sentenced to life for rights abuses

"Must read" for Judge Mortazavi and prison authorities in Iran

AFP)

BUENOS AIRES — The former general who ran a base that was the backdrop for multiple abuses during Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for human rights violations.

Santiago Omar Riveros, 86, who commanded the Campo de Mayo barracks near Buenos Aires, was found guilty of torturing and beating to death 15-year-old Floreal Avellaneda, and abducting his mother, Iris.

The teenager and his mother were arrested at their home a month after the March 1976 military coup.

Iris told the court they were both tortured to find out the whereabouts of her son's father, who had managed to escape capture by jumping from his rooftop when neighbors warned him of the police raid.
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Picture: Members of the organization Mothers of Plaza de Mayo pose with pictures of relatives who disappeared

UN rights experts warn Iran over torture

UN rights experts warn Iran over torture
(AFP)

GENEVA — Iran's Revolutionary Court must reject confessions of political opponents extracted under torture or harsh interrogation, three UN human rights experts warned Iran on Thursday.

In a joint statement, the experts said they were continuing to receive reports of deaths in custody and of torture of opponents arrested during the wave of protests in Iran.

"No judicial system can consider as valid a confession obtained as a result of harsh interrogations or under torture," said the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Manfred Nowak.

"These confessions for alleged crimes such as threats against national security and treason must not, under any circumstances, be admitted as evidence by the Revolutionary Court," added El Hadji Malick Sow, vice-chair of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
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Solidarity with the mourning mothers of Laleh Park - weekly in Vienna, Austria

"Allow international observers to monitor trials"

"The trial now going on in Tehran appears to be nothing but a 'show trial' through which the Supreme Leader and those around him seek to de-legitimize recent mass and largely peaceful protests and convince a very sceptical world that Mahmoud Amadinejad was re-elected fairly for a second term as president," said Irene Khan. "It is vital, therefore, that there is an international presence to observe the proceedings at this trial and uphold the rights of the defendants, and I urge the Iranian authorities to allow this."
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Iran admits election demonstrators were tortured

Simon Tisdall
The Guardian, Monday 10 August 2009 02.13 BST
Senior police commander says head of Tehran prison dismissed after evidence of abuse but denies anyone died
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Iran says 4,000 initially arrested in vote unrest

(AFP)
TEHRAN — Iran's judiciary said on Tuesday that 4,000 people were initially arrested by security forces in the crackdown on protesters after June's disputed presidential election.

"In the aftermath of the election, 4,000 people were arrested," judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi told reporters.

He said 3,700 were released "very soon", but that "those who were involved in the riots were detained."

About 30 people were killed in the violence that flared during massive street protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 12 vote. Hundreds of top reformists, political activists and journalists were among those arrested.

At least 110 people have been put on trial before a revolutionary court in Tehran, including a French woman lecturer and two local employees of the British and French embassies, accused of involvement in the unrest.