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Political prisoner says sodomy norm in his jail

Mehdi Mahmoudian, serving a five-year sentence in Rejai Shahr prison, wrote a letter in September 2010 Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi. The text has just been published on Kaleme, the website close to Mir-Hossain Musavi, one of the leaders of the Green opposition.

Mahmoudian, a member of the Society for the Defense of Prisoners’ Rights, says it is his religious duty to alert Khamenehi to the abuses taking place in prison.

“Throughout the different quarters of Rajai Shahr prison, sodomy has become a commonplace routine occurrence. And it seems that to lessen the dangers of contamination, prison guards provide health products to inmates,” he writes matter-of-factly.

Mahmoudian does not use the word condoms, but that is the implication when he discusses “health products.” His writes: “Anyone with a little beauty of the face, but who lacks physical strength in his arms or money in his account to pay extortionists, will be paraded in different rooms, and each quarter has a boss who will make money from this, and after a while can sell him to another.”

Mahmoudian reports on one a young man he says was raped seven times during a single night. “In the morning, when he complained about this to the guards, he was transferred to solitary.” Mahmoudian says prison guards effectively use inmates as “rent boys,” parceling them out for as much as $250.

“I don’t know what will become of me once this letter is published,” Mahmoudian wrote.

He has since been transferred to solitary confinement, his mother, Fatemeh Alvandi, told BBC Persian. She said he is being denied visitors, and his father was turned away from jail earlier this month after waiting hours to see his son.

Hadi Ghaemi, director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, told Fox News, “We know rape was used as a form of punishment against post-election protestors on a wide scale. And within prisons today, rape appears to be common, encouraged by prison guards as a way to punish targeted prisoners.”

Mehdi Karrubi, the other key leader of the Green opposition, wrote back in 2009 about the sexual assaults upon young men in prisons.

He got nowhere as his presentations of evidence were dismissed by the regime.

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