Torture and rape is nothing new

- it has been going on for 30 years.

In this video - from VOA (August 2009) - also posted on iReport, Mina Entezari talks about the legacy of torture and rape in Iranian prisons. English subtitles. Translation of interview on iReport.

Mina Entezari’s blog.

For more on political prisoners and prison torture during the 1980s, watch the documentary "Blindfolded Witnesses".

Also read this article in The New York Times News Blog The Lede, quoting from an English translation of an essay by the feminist lawyer and journalist Shadi Sadr:

"Published reports are available about these types of torture committed against women political prisoners after the 1979 Revolution. The most systematic type of reported rape has been the rape of virgin girls who were sentenced to death by execution because of political reasons. They were raped on the night before execution. These reports have been substantiated by frequent statements from the relatives of women political prisoners. On the day after the execution, authorities returned their daughter’s dead body to them along with a sum considered to be the alimony. Reports state that in order to lose their virginity, girls were forced to enter into a temporary marriage with men who were in charge of their prison. Otherwise it was feared that the executed prisoner would go to heaven because she was a virgin! [...]

[I]t is known beyond a shadow of a doubt, that during the 1980s, the rape of women political prisoners was prevalent."

And Mojtaba Samienejad’s (@madyar) blogpost Memories of Prison and Raped Prisoners also quoted in The Lede.