CNN - October 2: Ebrahim Sharifi

Iranian claims rape in prison after protests of IranElection

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Also read the following article in The New York Times.

Ebrahim Sharifi on Radio Farda

Rape victim Ebrahim Sharifi did an interview with Radio Farda

Translation tweeted by @persianbanoo, September 21.

Ebrahim Sharifi, computer science & Italian language student talks to Radio Farda about his arrest.

ES: I was returning home from the Italian Consulate when I heard someone calling me. I went towards the person calling me, and all of a sudden they grabbed me, handcuffed and blindfolded me. They threw me into a car pushing my head down behind the seat.

RF: How come in judiciary panel report they indicate there is no history of your arrest?

ES: Just what do you expect them to say. From the very beginning, when Mr. Moghadami started to interrogate me ... I told Mr. Karoubi that this prosecutor is talking to me as though I have received money from you to become a witness or as if I have become a pawn in a political game.

RF: After your arrest where was the first place they took you, and did they explain your charges?

ES: I was not interrogated the entire time. They only asked for my name when they released me.

RF: Where did they take you to?

ES: A place where I could not hear cars anymore. They took me out of the car and pushed me. All I could hear was the sound of my breath and others breathing. I was laying on my stomach. I don't know if I fell asleep or not. Early in the morning I could hear a woman's voice screaming: "Don't, don't, don't hit, don't hit!"

RF: Which detention center were you at?

ES: I don't know, I was handcuffed & blindfolded.

RF: How long were you at this detention center.

ES: From June 23 to June 30.

RF: When exactly were you raped?

ES: The fourth day they took me for a mock execution session. I told them, if you are going to execute me, then do it, what kind of games are you playing. Someone hit me in my stomach, I fell to the ground, he continued to hit me in my stomach. He told someone else "take him & make him pregnant". I was vomiting blood. They pulled me by my arm, took me to a room & tied me to the wall.

RF: You had said you didn't know if that same person raped you or someone else did.

ES: I think it was the same person. But I am not certain it was him or a foreign object was used. Even judge Mohamadi asked me if I resisted or protested in any way. I answered him I wasn't capable of thinking at that time.

RF: What were your feelings at that time?

ES: I was vomiting blood and also due to what had just happened I passed out. The man told me, "you can't even protect your-----how are you going to make velvet revolution?"

RF: When you became conscious, where did you find yourself?

ES: I was in a medical clinic, laying in a bed, IV in one arm and the other arm cuffed to the bed. Someone came in and asked a doctor if I was going to die or should they take care of me themselves. Blindfolded and handcuffed they threw me into a car drove me to Sabalan highway where they threw me out on the side of the road, told me to count to 60 nd then they left.

RF: What was the first thing you did after you arrived home?

ES: None of my family members knew of my rape until Mr. Alameh's video. Only Mr. Karoubi, a few Parliament members and Justice Dept officials and some of the clergy knew of the rape. The next day, a friend who is a lawyer advised me to make an official complaint. I went to the public prosecutor's office in Elahiyeh, filled in an official complaint. After being harassed there, I was able to obtain a letter from a judge. The judge told me to go to Niyavaran PD, he also said this could be the work of Monafeghin (MKO).

RF: Did you bring up the matter of your rape with the judge?

ES: No I did not.

RF: Then when did you decide to bring up the matter of your rape?

ES: I didn't want to talk about the rape. At the police station they told me it's best not to follow this case. They said this sounds like the Ministry's work, and I should thank God that I am still alive. I still had pain in my stomach and back, I was able to get a report from the medical examiner’s office. A friend suggested I should go to a clergy or to Mr. Karoubi. I went to Mr. Karoubi. At first I didn't want to say anything about being raped. Mr. Karoubi seeing my tears and the tone of my voice, asked if I was hiding anything. He asked everyone to leave the room, quoted an Ayeh from the Quran and asked if anything like that had happened to me. I said yes. I started to cry, he hugged me and was extremely upset. After a month and a half Mr. Moghadami interrogated me and took me to the medical examiner’s office. They told me that too long had gone by and that they could not make a ruling. The police had told me that the medical examiner's office would be able to even pin point the size of the object used.

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@persianbanoo:

So sad to think how many more rape victims there are that are not coming forward due to the stigma attached to rape in Iran. It is even harder for a female rape victim to come forward.

Rape victim Ebrahim Sharifi now lives outside Iran. His family and friends are being pressured to give TV interview and deny all of his rape charges. HRA is very concerned about his family’s safety.

IR HRA spokesman says, what happened to Sharifi was not a one time accident but seems to be a systematic torture method not limited to only one prisons in Tehran but is used in other cities in Iran as well.

The rape victims both male & female who are set free after the rape, are usually young and from religious families.

Ebrahim Sharifi on VoA

- telling his story of rape in prison

Link via @omidhabibinia

Unfortunately this video has no English subtitles.

Raped in prison

- pressured to stay silent

From Radio Free Europe

Radio Liberty Watchdog, September 14

“A well-known Iranian filmmaker, Reza Allamezadeh, has posted on his website a video of a young Iranian man, Ebrahim Sharifi, who says he was raped in prison in Iran after being arrested in the postelection crackdown. [See yesterday’s blog entry]

Sharifi says he was harassed and threatened by officials for talking about his experience and informing reformist cleric Mehdi Karrubi about what he went through in detention.

Karrubi, who has said that postelection detainees have been "savagely" raped in prison, said earlier this month that one of his rape witnesses had disappeared. Sharifi says he's Karrubi's witness and he decided to go into hiding following threats against his family.

The young man says he was told by a security officer, who first claimed to be a friend of his father, that if he talked about his experience with a special parliamentary commission investigating the postelection violence, he and his family would be killed in a fake accident. Sharifi says the man told him, "You know we will do it." Sharifi says that because of this threat he went into hiding and has been in hiding since.

He sent the video to Allamezadeh and asked him to make it public. Allamezadeh had recently posted testimony by two women who were raped in Iranian prisons in the 1980s. Sharifi says he decided to send a letter about his plight in prison to Allamezadeh so that someone outside Iran would know about it in case something happened to him and Karrubi.

[…] Sharifi says he was interrogated for 11 hours and pressured to confess that he had received money from Karrubi to make the rape allegations.

He says he thought many times about committing suicide, but he adds that he also thinks about his rights and the violations of the rights of people such as him. […]”

Read full story here.

Reza Allamezadeh’s interviews with other rape victims:

Witness 1

Witness 2

Karroubi’s witness speaks out

Twitter September 13-14:

• @IranRiggedElect: Reza Allamehzadeh claims video & conversation with Karroubi's witness (rape victim).
• @sbelg: Ebrahim Sharifi, Karoubi's witness, records a video on his cell phone & sends it out to tell his story.
• @iran88: Karoubi's eyewitness: My families was threatened to death, I'm hiding (FA) http://bit.ly/EVXpn

I’ll publish English translation if it becomes available.