Last Friday’s Guardian cited letters written by prisoners and their relatives describing what they said was a government policy for punishing opposition figures sexually in jail. The letters appeared on kalame.com, the website of opposition leader Mir-Hossain Musavi.
One letter, from Mehdi Mahmudian, a member of the Islamic Iran Partnership Party, the political organization formed to back the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, said: “In various cells inside this prison [Rajaishahr in Karaj], rape has become a common act and acceptable.”
He wrote of one young prisoner who was raped seven times in one night. “In this prison, those who have pretty faces and are unable to defend themselves or cannot afford to bribe others are forcibly taken to different cells each night.”
He wrote: “The situation is such that those exposed to rape even have an ‘owner’ and that owner makes money by renting him out to others and, after a while, selling him to someone else.”
A letter signed by 26 political figures jailed since the 2009 presidential election and sent to the official prison monitoring authority accused both the Intelligence Ministry and the Pasdaran of being behind the use of rape.
Among the signers were Behzad Nabavi, the cabinet minister who negotiated the release of the American hostages three decades ago, Mohsen Mirda-madi, who was one of the students who organized the seizure of the hostages 30 years ago, and Mohsen Aminzadeh, a former deputy foreign minister.
An unnamed relative of a political prisoner told Jaras, another opposition website, “During exercise periods, the strong ask for sex without any consideration. Criminals are constantly seen with condoms in hand, hunting for their victims.”
The relative said, “If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will certainly be raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out by the guards in the first place.”
Amnesty International described rape inside Iranian prisons in a report published last year. It has called on the Iranian government to investigate the latest allegations.
Meanwhile, National Police Chief Esmail Ahmadi-Moqad-dam condemned the media for reporting on rapes of women outside prisons.
Moqaddam complained that news reports about recent spates of rapes could cause a “sense of insecurity in society” and certainly “jeopardize the victim’s honor,” although none of the stories name any of the victims.
Abdol-Karim Lahiji of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues told Radio Farda the public should always be told when a rapist is on the loose so as to take precautions. “Yet since Iran’s police and security institutions are incapable of establishing security, they prefer to keep people in the dark about such crimes,” he said.
In one of the most notorious cases, the Tehran police for almost two years hid the fact that a rapist was posing as a taxi driver to rape and murder unaccompanied women. The public was only informed after the man was captured.