TEHRAN: An Iranian opposition leader has claimed that women and boys detained over the wave of unrest that swept the nation after the disputed presidential election were savagely raped in custody.
The allegations by defeated presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi surfaced as Iran hit back at Western criticism of its mass trials of protesters, including British and French embassy staff.
“A number of detainees have stated that some female detainees were so severely raped that their genitals were damaged. Others savagely raped young boys so that they suffer from depression and serious physical and mental damage,” Karroubi said in a letter posted on his website.
He said such crimes, if proven true, would “disgrace” Iran’s Islamic ruling system. He did not name any officials who made the rape claims.
Senior police and judiciary officials acknowledged over the weekend that opposition detainees have been abused in prison and called for those responsible to be punished, apparently in an effort to calm public outrage over the mistreatment and death of prisoners.
“The young boys are suffering from depression and serious physical and mental damage since their rapes,” Karroubi said, urging an inquiry into the claims.
Karroubi made the allegations in a letter to Rafsanjani in his capacity as head of the Assembly of Experts, the powerful body which selects the supreme leader and supervises his activities.
Karroubi, a reformist former parliamentary speaker who came a distant fourth in the June 12 election that returned President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, has previously alleged that protesters were abused and beaten in custody. Karroubi said he did not send the letter to Ahmadinejad because he considers his presidency illegitimate.
About 2,000 opposition supporters were arrested in the aftermath of Ahmadinejad’s disputed victory. Most have been released, but around 200 remain behind bars. At least 110 have also been put on trial.
Karroubi urged Rafsanjani to take up the issue with supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, saying the “clergy and the Islamic republic will be held responsible” for such acts. “The veracity of the letter’s contents have to be ascertained,” ISNA news agency quoted current Parliament speaker Ali Larijani as saying.
“I am also awaiting the report of our parliamentary panel which is probing the issue of detainees.”
Rafsanjani himself withdrew from leading this week’s Friday prayers in Tehran — which since the election have become a forum for political grandstanding — to prevent “political abuse” of the event, an official said.
The crackdowns have outraged the international community as Iran continues to battle its worst crisis since the 1979 Islamic revolution, with deep rifts between clerical groups and the ruling elite.
But Tehran hit back on Monday after Western governments condemned what they called “show trials.” Hard-line cleric Ahmad Khatami urged Tehran to take a “crushing and confronting” line with Britain, while another cleric, Ahmad Salek, said the British embassy had become “America’s and the Zionist regime’s den of spies.” Foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi called the Western criticism “illegal and surprising,” and said the court testimony by embassy employees was proof of “foreign intervention in Iran’s domestic affairs.”
