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USCIRF Calls for Accountability for Iran’s Crimes Against Humanity

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 02:36:22 +0000

March 13, 2024

Washington, DC – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) urges the U.S. government to support a United Nations (UN) Security Council referral to the International Criminal Court following the finding by a panel of UN-appointed experts that Iran’s crackdowns on protests against mandatory hijab and other religious freedom violations amount to crimes against humanity. Last week, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran determined that this repression “intersects with discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion.”

“The Fact-Finding Mission’s determination reflects meticulous consideration of the evidence of the Iranian regime’s egregious violations of religious freedom, many of which have explicitly targeted women and girls,” said USCIRF Commissioner Eric Ueland. “The Biden administration must work with like-minded partners, including fellow members of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, to support the Mission’s investigation and hold accountable Iranian regime officials complicit in these crimes, including through Global Magnitsky sanctions, visa bans, and similar measures.”

The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission determined that “methods of torture of detainees from ethnic or religious minorities were particularly severe and brutal” and expressed concern over the “severe…violations of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.” It also noted Iran’s use of vague legal provisions against insulting Islam to target religious minorities who peacefully asserted their freedom of religion or belief. Iranian authorities have used widespread sexual and gender-based violence against religious freedom protesters as a tool of repression.

“The Iranian government relentlessly violates women’s religious freedom and targets any individual who supports freedom of religion or belief in the country. USCIRF applauds the U.S. government’s support for the international efforts to hold Iran accountable for its heinous acts,” said USCIRF Commissioner Stephen Schneck. “USCIRF also urges Congress to reauthorize the bipartisan Lautenberg Amendment, a family unification program that provides a life-saving path to resettlement in the United States for persecuted Iranian religious minorities.”

In its 2023 Annual Report, USCIRF called on the U.S. government to support the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran and its important work. In September 2023, USCIRF published a report detailing Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protesters and outlining a new law that further restricts women’s freedoms on the basis of religion. In May 2023, USCIRF held a hearing on transnational repression of religious minorities, including by the government of Iran.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the U.S. Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on religious freedom abroad. USCIRF makes foreign policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State, and Congress intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion and belief. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at media@USCIRF.gov

https://www.uscirf.gov/news-room/releases-statements/uscirf-calls-accountability-irans-crimes-against-humanity

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Iran: Institutional discrimination against women and girls enabled human rights violations and crimes against humanity in the context of recent protests, UN Fact-Finding Mission says

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 00:40:09 +0000

08 March 2024

GENEVA (8 March 2024) –The violent repression of peaceful protests and pervasive institutional discrimination against women and girls has led to serious human rights violations by the Government of Iran, many amounting to crimes against humanity, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran said in its first report today.

The report to the Human Rights Council said violations and crimes under international law committed in the context of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests that began on 16 September 2022 include extra-judicial and unlawful killings and murder, unnecessary and disproportionate use of force, arbitrary deprivation of liberty, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and gender persecution.

Human rights violations have disproportionately impacted women, children and members of ethnic and religious minorities. The Mission found that gender persecution intersected with discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and religion.

“These acts form part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Iran, namely against women, girls, boys and men who have demanded freedom, equality, dignity and accountability,” said Sara Hossain, chair of the Fact-Finding Mission. “We urge the Government to immediately halt the repression of those who have engaged in peaceful protests, in particular women and girls.”

The protests in Iran were triggered by the death in the custody of the so-called morality police, in September 2022, of Jina Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman, after her arrest for alleged non-observance of Iran’s laws on mandatory hijab. The Mission found that physical violence in custody led to Ms. Amini’s unlawful death. Rather than investigating this unlawful death promptly, effectively, and thoroughly – as required under international human rights law – the Government actively obfuscated the truth, and denied justice.

Authorities then mobilized the entire security apparatus of the State to repress the protesters who took to the streets after Ms. Amini’s death. Credible figures suggest that as many as 551 protesters were killed by the security forces, among them at least 49 women and 68 children. Most deaths were caused by firearms, including assault rifles.

The Fact-Finding Mission found, in the cases investigated, that security forces used unnecessary and disproportionate force which resulted in the unlawful killing and injuries of protestors. A pattern of extensive injuries to protesters’ eyes caused the blinding of scores of women, men and children, branding them for life. The Mission also found evidence of extrajudicial killings.

The Mission acknowledged that security forces have been killed and injured, but found that the majority of protests have been peaceful.

Security forces repressed protests through a pattern of arbitrary arrests, including of people who merely danced, chanted, wrote slogans on walls, honked car horns, or posted on social media in support of their demands, including for women’s rights, equality and accountability. Many were blindfolded and taken away in unmarked vehicles, including ambulances. Hundreds of children, some as young as 10, were arrested and separated from their families without any information about their whereabouts.

In detention, the State authorities tortured victims to extract confessions or to intimidate, humiliate or inflict punishment. The Mission found cases of women and girls subjected to rape and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence, including gang rape, rape with an object, electrocution of genitalia, forced nudity and groping. Security forces characterised women’s demands for equality and non-discrimination as a “willingness to get naked” and “spreading immorality.”

The Fact-Finding Mission found that the Government arbitrarily executed at least nine young men from December 2022 to January 2024, after summary trials which relied on confessions extracted under torture and ill-treatment .Dozens of individuals, remain at risk of execution or receiving a death sentence in relation to the protests. Women and children have been among the many charged with capital offences since the start of the protests.

Many are still paying a high price for having supported the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. Authorities are doubling down on their repression of families of victims, journalists, human rights defenders, lawyers, medical doctors and many others simply for expressing their views, supporting the protesters or seeking truth and justice for victims.

State authorities at the highest levels encouraged, sanctioned and endorsed human rights violations through statements justifying the acts and conduct of the security forces. They engaged in a disinformation campaign depicting protesters as “rioters”, “foreign agents” and or “separatist” groups. State security forces, in particular the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Basij forces and the Law Enforcement Command of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Faraja), among others, participated in the commission of serious human rights violations and crimes under international law.

The authorities in Iran have prevented and obstructed efforts of victims and their families to obtain a remedy and reparation. Victims face a justice system lacking independence, transparency and accountability, the Fact-Finding Mission found.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has the obligation to uphold the rights of women and children, and to ensure the right to truth, justice, and reparations of all victims,” said Viviana Krsticevic, Member of the Fact-Finding Mission. ”Given the deeply rooted institutional discrimination against Iranian women and girls, they are owed transformative reparations that guarantee their full, free and equal participation in all spheres of Iranian society. Given our findings, this would entail, among other measures, an overhaul of criminal and civil laws, a reform of the justice system, and measures for accountability.”

The Fact-Finding Mission regrets the lack of meaningful cooperation by the Iranian authorities with the mandate, despite repeated requests for information, including information on killing of and injuries to security forces and its denial of access to the country and people. It further notes the total lack of transparency with regard to the Government’s own reported investigations into allegations of serious human rights violations.

Absent effective remedies and in light of the systemic and historic impunity for violations in Iran, Member States should explore avenues for accountability at international level and in their domestic systems. The Fact-Finding Mission calls on States to apply the principle of universal jurisdiction to all crimes under international law without procedural limitations, establish victim funds, jointly or individually, and provide protection, including by granting asylum and humanitarian visas to those fleeing persecution in Iran in the context of the protests.

“We urge the Iranian authorities to halt all executions and immediately and unconditionally release all persons arbitrarily arrested and detained in the context of the protests, and to end the repression of protesters, their families and supporters of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement,” said Shaheen Sardar Ali, a member of the Fact-Finding Mission.

Background: The UN Human Rights Council mandated the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran on 24 November 2022 to investigate alleged human rights violations in the Islamic Republic of Iran related to the protests that began there on 16 September 2022, especially with respect to women and children. On 20 December 2022, the President of the Human Rights Council announced the appointment of Sara Hossain (Bangladesh), Shaheen Sardar Ali (Pakistan) and Viviana Krsticevic (Argentina) to serve as the three independent members of the Mission and appointed Sara Hossain as its Chair.

More information on the work of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran can be found here.

For more information and media requests, please contact: Ahmad Azadi, Iran Fact-Finding Mission Communications Officer, at ahmad.azadi@un.org, or Todd Pitman, Media Adviser for the HRC’s Investigative Missions, at todd.pitman@un.org, Cell: +41 76 691 1761, or Pascal Sim, HRC Media Officer, at simp@un.org.

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/03/iran-institutional-discrimination-against-women-and-girls-enabled-human

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‘Iranian cyber army’ blamed as Wikipedia deletes atrocities

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 00:33:21 +0000

FIONA HAMILTON | THE TIMES | JANUARY 8, 2024

Wikipedia entries have been changed to downgrade Iranian human rights atrocities and other abuses, The Times has learnt.

The alterations raise concerns that the site is being used to manipulate information about the hardline Islamic regime. Details have been changed to discredit dissident groups, and government publications have been presented as impartial sources on the free online encyclopaedia.

In one case key details about mass executions by the regime were removed. The involvement of senior officials in the 1988 death commissions, in which thousands of political prisoners were killed, was also deleted. In a separate ruling, supporters of Vahid Beheshti, an Iranian human rights activist who went on hunger strike in the UK, were thwarted when they tried to set up a Wikipedia page.

Mattie Heaven, Mr Beheshti’s wife, said four attempts were made to set up a page because there was so much online misinformation about her husband, who continues to put pressure on the British government to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organisation. Ms Heaven said the text was repeatedly removed so the page could not function. “We believed it was the Iranian cyber army,” she said.

The Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit group that operates Wikipedia, said all content was determined by its global community of volunteers. A spokeswoman said all information was required to be neutral and verified by reliable sources. Serial offenders could be banned, she added.

The online encyclopaedia also deleted references to the jailing of an Iranian official in Sweden in 2022 for human rights abuses, and the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Albania in 2018 over their alleged involvement in a bomb plot against dissidents. The changes were made anonymously so it is impossible to question the motives.

Ms Heaven, an adviser to the International Organisation to Preserve Human Rights, said online disinformation was a key tool of the Iranian regime. She said it was important for it to have legitimacy in the eyes of the world. “They care what the world thinks about them,” she said. “If the regime can add confusion and misinformation then they will do it.”

British security officials have increasingly called out Iranian tactics. MI5 and police said they had disrupted at least 15 plots to kidnap or kill Iranian dissidents in Britain since the start of 2022.

Online misinformation is a key tool for the regime. In 2019 the news website Open Democracy revealed key differences in the reporting of Iranian affairs on Persian Wikipedia compared with its English counterpart.

It reported that the Persian page on Iranian involvement in the Syrian civil war was based mostly on unchallenged statements by Iranian officials.

Manipulation now appears to have been carried out on the English-language Wikipedia. Many of the Iran edits concerned a page for the People’s Mujahidin of Iran, also known as the Mujahidin-e-Khalq, an exiled opposition group. Over the summer reports on human rights abuses by Iranian officials on the MEK’s page was deleted. The anonymous users who changed the content cited the need for “trimming”.

Last June details were removed from a section on the 1988 death commissions, including that many of the political prisoners were jailed for peaceful activities such as handing out leaflets. A reference to the executions being carried out by “several high-ranking members of Iran’s current government” was also deleted. A month earlier the same anonymous user removed references to the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats from Albania due to alleged involvement in a bomb plot against the MEK in 2018. In April 2022 a reference to about 3500 MEK prisoners being killed in the early 1980s in Iran was removed.

Analysis showed some edits were replaced but many deletions remained intact at the time of publication. Marco, a Wikipedia editor, reported the changes to site administrators and alerted The Times because he believed insufficient action was taken.

He also noted that material on Iran’s mass internal protest movement appeared to be manipulated.

A Wikimedia spokeswoman said the foundation took misinformation “very seriously”.

“When a user account or IP address repeatedly violates policies, Wikipedia administrators can take disciplinary action and block or ban a user or IP address,” she said. “The foundation has a trust and safety function that flags such issues to the volunteer community when it is reported.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/iranian-cyber-army-blamed-as-wikipedia-deletes-atrocities/news-story/3947931532816bc4f1a9c5eca7df5f71

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Iran Conducting Influence Operations in the Biden Administration

Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:11:18 +0000

National Review | By DAVID ZIMMERMANN | November 14, 2023

Iran has been conducting covert influence operations for years in the U.S. and abroad as part of a concerted disinformation campaign that is suspected to be espionage, a congressional briefing and corresponding report revealed Tuesday.

The 82-page report, titled “Iran: The Ayatollah’s Hidden Hand,” details how supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Iranian regime use operatives in the Biden administration to influence U.S. policy involving the Islamic Republic, building on a Semafor article that was published in September. At the time, it was reported that at least three Iranian agents transitioned from soliciting Tehran’s talking points to working directly on policy under the purview of U.S. special representative for Iran, Rob Malley. In April, Malley’s security clearance was suspended over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

“Having been provided with top-level security clearances, these Iranian agents had access to highly classified and sensitive information available only to senior U.S. officials, placing them in a unique position to mislead American policymakers while undermining policy toward Iran’s theocratic regime,” the newly published report states. “The actors allegedly collaborated with and took direction from senior Iranian officials while maintaining the appearance of working on behalf of the U.S. government.”

In addition to swaying foreign policy in favor of Iranian interests, the operatives also worked to subvert favorable opinions of the Middle Eastern nation’s leading opposition group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), from Washington, D.C. Iran continues to demonize the MEK to this day, accusing the political group of terrorism primarily for its defiance of Ayatollah Khamenei.

“By brazenly targeting the highly effective dissident organization, the operatives hoped to leave U.S. officials with the false impression that there is no viable alternative to the ayatollahs — and certainly not one with a pro-democracy record that remains committed to toppling clerical rule,” the report adds.

Dr. Ivan Sascha Sheehan, associate dean at the University of Baltimore who authored the report, presented an overview of his findings to select congressmen, foreign policy experts, and the media on Capitol Hill, where he called on both chambers of Congress to organize investigations and hearings into the matter.

“The Iranian regime poses a direct national security threat to U.S. citizens and U.S. security interests,” Sheehan said. “The fact of the matter is that no organization who aligns themselves with a hostile state or serves as a foreign agent should wield influence over U.S. policy or have access to sensitive national security information.”

Representatives Tom McClintock (R., Calif.), Randy Weber (R., Texas), and ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., the former assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the George W. Bush administration, introduced the professor’s research at the briefing.

While lauding the House’s actions to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Sheehan advocated for Congress and decision-makers in Washington to be aware of the tactics that Tehran employs to “advance their broader, geopolitical agenda.” Early this month, the House passed a bipartisan resolution that declares a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable under U.S. policy.

Intimidation of U.S. officials is one of the many tactics listed in the book, Sheehan said, noting one of the key endorsers of his report was shot in Madrid, Spain, just five days prior to the Tuesday briefing. Professor and European statesman Alejo Vidal-Quadras, who fortunately survived, has reason to believe the Iranian regime was behind the failed assassination attempt. The Spanish police’s special terrorism unit is currently investigating the matter.

Sheehan posed questions to the audience, wondering whether the Iranian influence operations have officially become efforts of espionage and how much damage the covert campaign has caused.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-conducting-influence-operations-in-the-biden-administration-report/

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Inside Iran’s Influence Operation

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 19:14:35 +0000

Semafor | Jay Solomon | Sept. 29, 2023

THE SCOOP

In the spring of 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers. They called it the Iran Experts Initiative.

The scope and scale of the IEI project has emerged in a large cache of Iranian government correspondence and emails reported for the first time by Semafor and Iran International. The officials, working under the moderate President Hassan Rouhani, congratulated themselves on the impact of the initiative. At least two of the people on the Foreign Ministry’s list were, or became, top aides to Robert Malley, the Biden administration’s special envoy on Iran, who was placed on leave this June following the suspension of his security clearance. A third was hired by the think tank Malley ran just as he left for the State Department.

The documents offer deep and unprecedented new insights into the thinking and inner workings of Iran’s Foreign Ministry at a crucial time in the nuclear diplomacy — even as Tehran’s portrayal of events is questioned, if not flatly denied, by others involved in the IEI. They show how Iran was capable of the kind of influence operations that the U.S. and its allies in the region often conduct.

The emails were obtained and translated by Iran International, a Persian-language television news channel headquartered in London — which was briefly based in Washington due to Iranian government threats — and shared with Semafor. Semafor and Iran International jointly reported on some aspects of the IEI. Both organizations have produced their own stories independently.

The communications reveal the access Rouhani’s diplomats have had to Washington’s and Europe’s policy circles, particularly during the final years of the Obama administration, through this network. One of the German academics in the IEI, according to the emails, offered to ghostwrite op-eds for officials in Tehran. Others would, at times, seek advice from the Foreign Ministry’s staff about attending conferences and hearings in the U.S. and Israel. The IEI participants were prolific writers of op-eds and analyses, and provided insights on television and Twitter, regularly touting the need for a compromise with Tehran on the nuclear issue — a position in line with both the Obama and Rouhani administrations at the time. The emails describe the IEI being initiated following Rouhani’s 2013 election, when he was looking to find an accommodation with the West on the nuclear issue. According to the emails, Iran’s Foreign Ministry, through its in-house think tank — the Institute for Political and International Studies — reached out to ten “core” members for the project, through which it planned to liaise over the next 18 months to aggressively promote the merits of a nuclear deal between Tehran and Washington, which was finalized in July 2015.

“This initiative which we call ‘Iran Experts Initiative (IEI)’ is consisted of a core group of 6-10 distinguished second-generation Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US,” Saeed Khatibzadeh, a Berlin-based Iranian diplomat and future Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote to Mostafa Zahrani, the head of the IPIS think tank in Tehran, on March 5, 2014, as the project gained steam. Their communication veered between English and Farsi — which was translated by Iran International and independently verified by Semafor.

Khatibzadeh wrote again a week later, on March 11, and said that he had gained support for the IEI from two young academics — Ariane Tabatabai and Dina Esfandiary — following a meeting with them in Prague. “We three agreed to be the core group of the IEI.”

Tabatabai currently serves in the Pentagon as the chief of staff for the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, a position that requires a U.S. government security clearance. She previously served as a diplomat on Malley’s Iran nuclear negotiating team after the Biden administration took office in 2021. Esfandiary is a senior advisor on the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, a think tank that Malley headed from 2018-2021.

Tabatabai and Esfandiary didn’t respond to requests for comment on the IEI. Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, confirmed her participation in the initiative. But the Crisis Group, which promotes conflict resolution globally, said the IEI was an informal network of academics and researchers that wasn’t overseen by the Iranian Foreign Ministry and that it received funding from a European government and some European institutions, which they declined to identify.

The emails discussing the IEI were part of a trove of thousands of Zahrani’s correspondence that Iran International obtained. These include passport copies, resumes, invitations to conferences, airplane tickets, and visa applications. It’s not clear how complete or comprehensive the documents are concerning the IEI.

KNOW MORE

According to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s communications, the IEI project ramped up after this initial outreach. On May 14, 2014, a kickoff conference was held at the Palais Coburg hotel in Vienna — site of the international nuclear talks. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was listed as an attendee, according to an email, as well as members of his nuclear negotiating team and eight representatives from Western think tanks. Lower-level Iranian diplomats had initially proposed the meeting be held in Tehran, but Zarif’s deputy advised against it for logistical reasons.

Zarif was fixated during the discussions in Vienna on elevating, or creating, a public figure who could promote Iran’s views on the international stage concerning the nuclear issue, according to the emails. He specifically mentioned an Iranian version of Robert Einhorn, an Obama administration diplomat and expert on nuclear proliferation, who regularly published scholarly pieces on Iran’s nuclear program and appeared at U.S. and European think tank events.

“You were very right by saying that it is a shame that Iran has not its very own Bob Einhorn — someone who can foster attention on Iran’s case the way Einhorn does for the US or the P5+1 for that matter,” Adnan Tabatabai, a German academic who attended the IEI meeting in Vienna, wrote Zarif in English five days after it ended. The P5+1 was the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany, and the diplomatic bloc negotiating the nuclear deal with Tehran. Adnan Tabatabai is not related to Ariane Tabatabai.

Adnan Tabatabai also offered Iran’s Foreign Ministry to ghostwrite pieces on its behalf. “Our suggestion could be that we as a group, work on an essay (2000 words) regarding the ongoing talks,” Tabatabai told Zarif in the same email. “It could, for example, be published under a former official’s name, through the CSR or IPIS — of course after you and your team revised the piece.”

The foreign minister responded four days later, copying Zahrani. Zarif accepted the suggestion and recommended that “these articles or Op-Eds” be published under the names of various Iranian and non-Iranians abroad, as well as former officials. It’s unclear if, or how many, pieces were actually published through this process.

Adnan Tabatabai declined to comment about the IEI, saying the reporting by Iran International and Semafor was “based on falsehoods and factually wrong assumptions.” He also questioned the authenticity of the correspondence with Zarif. Iran International commissioned a forensic examination of the emails, and found no discrepancies in the metadata that would indicate they were inauthentic.

The IEI quickly pushed ahead with one of the initiative’s primary objectives — publishing opinion pieces and analyses in top-tier media in the U.S. and Europe, specifically targeting policy makers. Less than a month after the Vienna gathering, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group, a close protégé of Robert Malley’s who is listed as part of the IEI, sent an article on defusing the nuclear crisis to Zahrani of IPIS, ahead of publication. “I look forward to your comments and feedback,” he wrote in Farsi on June 4, 2014, attaching a piece entitled, “The Conceptual Perils of Nuclear Diplomacy with Iran.”

The emails show that the article was shared by Zahrani with Foreign Minister Zarif the day it arrived. It was then published 12 days later in the National Interest, under the title, “False Dilemmas in the Iran Talks,” with some minor wording changes. It’s unclear if Zarif made any fixes as no reply email from him is in the chain. While many think tanks and media outlets have policies against sharing articles before publication, ICG said in a statement to Semafor that it routinely and actively solicits the views of the primary actors involved in a conflict and shares relevant text with policymakers.

Ariane Tabatabai, the current Pentagon official, on at least two occasions checked in with Iran’s Foreign Ministry before attending policy events, according to the emails. She wrote to Zahrani in Farsi on June 27, 2014, to say she’d met Saudi Prince Turki al Faisal — a former ambassador to the U.S. — who expressed interest in working together and invited her to Saudi Arabia. She also said she’d been invited to attend a workshop on Iran’s nuclear program at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. “I am not interested in going, but then I thought maybe it would be better that I go and talk, rather than an Israeli like Emily Landau who goes and disseminates disinformation. I would like to ask your opinion too and see if you think I should accept the invitation and go.”

Zahrani replied the same day: “All things considered, it seems Saudi Arabia is a good case, but the second case [Israel] is better to be avoided. Thanks.” Tabatabai answered a few hours later: “Thank you very much for your advice. I will take action regarding Saudi Arabia and will keep you updated on the progress.” There’s no evidence Tabatabai went to the conference in Israel, though her books and research reports suggest she’s interviewed a number of senior Israeli officials.

Ariane Tabatabai told Zahrani that she was slated to give testimony before the U.S. Congress on the nuclear deal. On July 10, 2014, she wrote that she had been asked to appear before multiple congressional committees alongside two Harvard academics — Gary Samore and William Tobey — whom she viewed as hawkish on Iran. “I will bother you in the coming days. It will be a little difficult since both Will and Gary do not have favorable views on Iran,” she wrote.

Tabatabai shared a link with Zahrani to an article she’d published in the Boston Globe that outlined the “Five Myths about Iran’s Nuclear Program.” The piece explained why Iran needs nuclear power and highlighted a fatwa, or religious edict, that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei allegedly issued forbidding the development of nuclear weapons as un-Islamic. Some Western officials have questioned the legitimacy of the fatwa.

THE VIEW FROM TEHRAN

The Iranian officials behind the IEI — Zahrani and Khatibzadeh — boasted to their superiors in internal emails about the initiative’s successes. They tracked how often the academics in the IEI wrote or were cited in the media during the week after a preliminary nuclear agreement was reached between Tehran and world powers on April 2, 2015 in Lausanne, Switzerland. The media data was shared with others in the Iranian Foreign Ministry in Tehran.

“Following our phone conversation, I attached here for your review only a few of the most significant works some of our friends published during the week after the Lausanne framework agreement was reached,” Khatibzadeh wrote in Farsi. “We were in constant contact and worked vigorously around the clock. Some friends performed as resourceful as a media outlet all by themselves.”

On April 14, 2015, Khatibzadeh emailed Zahrani, who then forwarded the message to Zarif and one of the foreign minister’s deputies on the nuclear negotiating team, Majid Takht-Ravanchi. Khatibzadeh attached 10 separate Word documents to the email, each referencing the media footprint of each IEI academic. These included Ariane Tabatabai and Ali Vaez, who have both worked closely with Malley over the past decade, and Dina Esfandiary, who was hired during his time at ICG. (Malley publicly welcomed Esfandiary to his team at ICG on Twitter in January of 2021, but stepped down to join Biden’s State Department before she started.)

Khatibzadeh, the future Foreign Ministry spokesman boasted in the email: “These are in addition to hundreds of tweets, posts and…on the internet that were definitely unique and trend-sending in their own right. It should be noted that these works were not only published in English, but also in several other international languages.”

The list shared by Khatibzadeh showed that in one week, Ariane Tabatabai published four articles, including in Foreign Policy, and gave interviews to the Huffington Post and Iran’s Fars News agency, which is linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, mostly supporting Tehran’s views on the nuclear talks. In an article for the National Interest co-written with Dina Esfandiary, they argued that Iran was “too powerful” to be contained and that “Tehran doesn’t need any agreement to be empowered and to strengthen its foothold in the region.”

Ali Vaez was also extremely prolific in his media outreach. The ICG analyst was cited in virtually all of the U.S.’s major newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, from the initiation of the IEI in March 2014 to the finalization of the Iran nuclear deal in July 2015.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the IPIS think tank, and Zarif, Zahrani, and Khatibzadeh didn’t respond to requests for comment.

JAY’S VIEW

Covering Iran, either as an academic or a journalist, is a minefield. Access to both the country and Iranian officials is tightly controlled. And even opportunities come with serious caveats. During my visits to Iran as a reporter, I needed to provide my questions and story ideas to the Foreign Ministry ahead of arrival and hire a government-appointed fixer. This individual provided translations, but also clearly monitored my movements and meetings. I assumed Iran’s intelligence services were closely tracking me.

Tehran also aggressively pushes its information operations overseas, sometimes with success, sometimes not. An Iranian academic and permanent U.S. resident who used to contact me with his insights on Tehran’s nuclear program, a man named Kaveh Afrasiabi, was arrested in a Boston suburb in 2021 for allegedly working as an unregistered agent for the Iranian regime. He’s allowed to return to Tehran as part of the prisoner-swap agreement reached this month between the Biden administration and Iran, though Afrasiabi said he plans to stay in the U.S.

UPDATE: Afrasiabi, whose case was in the pre-trial stage before he was pardoned, contacted me after the publication of this story and denied ever acting as an agent advancing Iran’s interests. “I strongly object to such unfair and false characterizations that have seriously marred my reputation,” he wrote in an email. “My part-time international affairs consulting for Iran’s mission under the UN guidelines had absolutely no bearing on my wealth of books and articles…These include numerous articles clearly at odds with and critical of Iran.” He added: “I was a national security asset to US, and never a threat.”

The Iranian regime is also factionalized, and navigating these fissures is hazardous for diplomats and journalists. The Iran Experts Initiative was born from a Rouhani administration eager to end Tehran’s pariah status following eight years of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in which he courted Holocaust denial and promoted the eradication of Israel. Rouhani’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had developed extensive ties to Western politicians and academics during his earlier tenure as Tehran’s ambassador to the United Nations. Participants in the IEI, as well as most Western governments, saw Rouhani’s tenure and Zarif’s ascendence as an opening to try and integrate the Islamic Republic into the global economy and end the nuclear crisis. The Obama administration used both overt and covert channels to do this.

But Rouhani never represented the Islamic Republic’s more radical or hardline face, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC. And the election in 2021 of President Ebrahim Raisi, who’s been sanctioned by the U.S. for human rights abuses, largely closed the window on these channels. In fact, Raisi’s government has turned on Robert Malley and some IEI members in recent weeks, accusing them in state media of seeking to incite racial and ethnic unrest in the country. The Tehran Times, an English-language media outlet associated with Raisi’s office, has reveled in Malley’s suspension: It’s claimed in a string of columns that the diplomat’s disciplinary action is tied to the very types of outreach to Iran he and some of his colleagues pursued.

“Malley’s suspicious interactions with his aides of Iranian descent contributed to his downfall,” the Tehran Times wrote in a column published last month. The State Department has declined to comment on the reasons behind his suspension. The FBI is also investigating Malley, suggesting the diplomat’s actions may be more serious than just the mishandling of classified information.

Malley is hardly the first U.S. official to be ensnared in the machinations of the Islamic Republic. The opacity of Tehran’s system and the expansive work of its intelligence services can mask the government’s true intentions. The IEI emails offer a unique look into the Iranian system.

ROOM FOR DISAGREEMENT

None of Malley’s associates whom Iranian diplomats cited as being part of the Iran Experts Initiative spoke directly to Semafor. But Vaez’s and Esfandiary’s current employer, the International Crisis Group, has a significantly different understanding of the IEI and Tehran’s role in it.

Elissa Jobson, Crisis Group’s chief of advocacy, said the IEI was an “informal platform” that gave researchers from different organizations an opportunity to meet with IPIS and Iranian officials, and that it was supported financially by European institutions and one European government. She declined to name them.

“To spell it out a bit more, it was a means to facilitate research discussions and not a more formal entity where participants could be directed by anyone,” she said. “The fact that participants were from a host of different think tanks demonstrates that it was merely an informal platform.” ICG also notes that all the work its staff publishes is vetted and agreed upon in-house; they dispute that Iran — or any government — could have directed any members of their team to take a position at odds with the organization’s official view.

Another European think tank, the European Council on Foreign Relations, confirmed that one of its senior fellows, Ellie Geranmayeh, also took part in the Iran Experts Initiative. An ECFR spokesman said a European government backed the IEI, but didn’t identify it, and stressed that that the think tank always covers the “core costs” of its staff’s research trips. “As part of its efforts to inform European policy, ECFR regularly engages with experts and think tanks across the world, including through research visits and workshops,” the spokesman said.

Malley didn’t respond to requests for comment. Both the State Department and Pentagon declined to comment on the substance of the correspondence related to the IEI, but said they support Ariane Tabatabai and the vetting process involved in the approval of her security clearance. “Dr. Tabatabai was thoroughly and properly vetted as a condition of her employment with the Department of Defense. We are honored to have her serve,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

https://www.semafor.com/article/09/25/2023/inside-irans-influence-operation

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Iran: Compulsory veiling bill a despicable assault on rights of women and girls

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 02:14:49 +0000

Amnesty International | September 21, 2023

Reacting to the news that Iran’s parliament has passed a new bill that would impose further draconian penalties severely violating women’s and girls’ rights as well as increasing prison terms and fines for defying Iran’s degrading and discriminatory compulsory veiling laws, Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa said:

“This bill is a despicable assault on the human rights of women and girls that will further entrench violence and discrimination against them in Iran. If approved by Iran’s Guardian Council, it will further exacerbate the already suffocating surveillance and policing of women’s bodies and require the Islamic Republic’s various political, security and administrative arms to obsessively observe compliance with compulsory veiling laws and control women’s and girls’ lives.

“The Iranian authorities are doubling down on punishments against women and girls who claim their human rights to freedom of expression, religion, belief and bodily autonomy. This all-out assault is part of the authorities’ ongoing efforts to crush the spirit of resistance among those who dared to stand up against decades of oppression and inequality as part of the ‘Woman Life Freedom’ popular uprising.

“States must urgently call on the Iranian authorities to revoke the bill and abolish all degrading and discriminatory compulsory veiling laws and regulations. They must also pursue legal pathways at the international level to hold Iranian officials accountable for ordering, planning and committing such widespread and systematic violations against women and girls.”

“The Iranian authorities are doubling down on punishments against women and girls who claim their human rights to freedom of expression, religion, belief and bodily autonomy.”

Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International

Background:

On 20 September, Iran’s parliament approved the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab”. The bill needs to be approved by Iran’s Guardian Council to become law. It would expand the powers and capabilities of intelligence and security bodies including the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij force and the police to control and further oppress women and girls.

The law equates unveiling to “nudity” and provides for prison terms of up to 10 years for anyone who defies compulsory veiling laws. The law also makes “insulting or ridiculing the hijab” a criminal offence punishable by a prison sentence, travel ban and/or fine and encourages ordinary people, businesses, and pro-government vigilantes to enforce compulsory veiling.

In May 2023, the authorities presented the “Bill to Support the Culture of Chastity and Hijab” to parliament. In August 2023, parliamentarians voted for the revised bill, which was not made public at the time, to be adopted in a closed special internal committee, in order to expedite its passing, further evading transparency and public scrutiny. On 20 September, the special internal committee approved the text of the bill, which was then sent to the Guardian Council for final approval.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/09/iran-compulsory-veiling-bill-a-despicable-assault-on-rights-of-women-and-girls/

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Biden admin walks tightrope amid Albanian police raid on Iranian dissidents that killed one, injured dozens

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 21:26:03 +0000

State Department says it has been ‘assured’ Albanian government did not violate any human rights

By Caitlin McFall | Fox News | 6/20/2023

The State Department has found itself in a precarious position after dozens of Iranian dissidents seeking safe haven in Albania were reportedly injured Tuesday and one allegedly killed in a camp raid by state police after the inhabitants were accused of plotting cyberattacks against the Albanian government.

An alleged 1,000 Albanian police officers from the Special Prosecution against Corruption and Organized Crime unit descended upon the Ashraf-3 and Ashraf-4 camps located in Maneza in western Albania, which is home to at least 3,000 Iranian oppositionists from the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) – an Iranian resistance group that supports the establishment of a new government in Tehran.

According to reporting by the Albanian Daily News, the situation was initially described as “calm” as police officials looked for people they suspected of being “infiltrators of the regime of Iran.” But the situation apparently turned violent after the Iranian inhabitants refused to hand over personal computers and devices to the authorities. The police officers turned to tear gas and pepper spray against the camp residents and began breaking down doors to people’s homes before confiscating or destroying personal computers, according to a statement by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), an Iranian political organization that is based in France and Albania.

The group called the raid “criminal and repressive” and claimed that some 100 camp inhabitants were injured in the attack, though Fox News Digital could not independently verify this account and local reporting put the number of those injured around three dozen. The individual killed was 65-year-old Ali Mostashari, an activist during the Iranian revolution and a senior MEK member, according to Ali Safavi a member of the NCRI’s Foreign Affairs Committee based in Paris. The circumstances around Mostashari’s death remain unclear.

“He escaped death several times when the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the clerical regime’s security forces tried to apprehend him in the early 1980s. By murdering him, the Albanian police has done what the Iranian regime could not accomplish,” Safavi told Fox News Digital Tuesday.

The MEK and NCRI have called on the U.S., the U.N. and the European Union – which Albania applied for membership to in 2009 and was granted “candidate status” in 2014 – to condemn the raid and hold Albania accountable for human rights violations as defined under international treaties like the Refugee Convention, the World Declaration Human rights and the European Convention.

In a comment to Fox News Digital a State Department spokesperson said Washington had been assured “all actions were conducted in accordance with applicable laws, including with regard to the protection of the rights and freedoms of all persons in Albania.”

“We support the Government of Albania’s right to investigate any potential illegal activities within its territory,” the spokesperson added without commenting on how this could affect the U.S.’s ties to the Iranian dissidents there. The U.S. sits in a precarious position when it comes to the aggressive raids Tuesday as it has supported the Iranian dissidents abroad since at least 2009 when it led efforts to remove the oppositionists from Iraq after the Iraqi government became hostile toward the MEK.

At the time, the U.S. still designated the MEK as a terrorist organization over its militant campaigns that opposed the U.S.-backed shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, along with the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s, followed by an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. But by 2012 the State Department removed the MEK from its designated terrorist list over the group’s renouncement of violence and open cooperation with the U.S. in Iraq.

Some 2,700 MEK members were then transferred to Albania at the request of the U.S. beginning in 2014, according to EuroNews. The U.S. has also been a top supporter of the Albanian government and, following a July 2022 cyberattack, the U.S. Cyber National Mission Force organized an operational “hunt” to “identify, monitor and analyze adversary tactics, techniques and procedures” relating to the “malicious” assault.

Tehran was blamed for the attack and diplomatic relations were severed.

But the tensions between Albania and Iran over the cyberattack have also put pressure on the dissident community residing within Albanian borders. Albanian Minister of Interior Bledar Cuci on Tuesday rejected any accusation of wrongdoing and claimed the actions taken were in line with a decision made by Albania’s Special Court against Corruption and Organized Crime.

“The Court’s decision is a consequence of actions that openly violate the agreement and commitments made by the MEK group since 2014 when they were settled in Albania solely for humanitarian purposes,” he said in a statement first reported by EuroNews. “Unfortunately, this group did not adhere to these commitments and violated the agreement.”

“The actions of the State Police to enforce the law have been carried out as in any other part of the territory of the Republic of Albania.”

The minister also denied there were any fatalities or injuries as a result from the day’s raid and said that, according to state police officials, “there was resistance within the camp against the work of the State Police, which goes against the procedural framework of law enforcement.”

https://www.foxnews.com/world/biden-admin-walks-tightrope-albanian-police-raid-iranian-dissidents-killed-one-injured-dozens

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Stop the Execution Spree in Iran

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 22:00:44 +0000

Amnesty International | June 1, 2023
The Iranian authorities are carrying out a horrific state-sanctioned killing spree under the guise of judicial executions. Those executed include people convicted of drug-related offences, protesters, political dissidents, and members of oppressed ethnic minorities. Call for states to urgently intervene to pressure the Iranian authorities to halt all executions now.

What is the problem?
The Iranian authorities are ruthlessly carrying out an execution spree. Prisons across the country have become sites of mass state-sanctioned killings under the guise of judicial executions. Since the start of 2023, authorities have implemented hundreds of death sentences. In the month of May alone, authorities executed three people a day on average. This arbitrary deprivation of people’s lives must stop.

Authorities have executed individuals in relation to drug-related offences, protesters and political dissidents. The death penalty is also used to target oppressed minority groups. This year, members of Iran’s Baluchi ethnic minority account for around 20% of recorded executions while making up only about 5% of Iran’s population.

In the first five months of this year, executions of people convicted of drug-related offences tripled compared to the same period last year, and are predominantly affecting the most impoverished communities. The authorities also executed individuals for their social media posts and for sexual relations between consenting adults.

The Iranian authorities are intensifying their use of the death penalty as a tool of political repression. They are using this ultimate cruel and inhuman punishment to torment and terrorize people in Iran and impose silence and subservience through brute force.

What can you do to help?
Sign the petition and urge states to immediately call on Iran to impose an official moratorium on all executions, send representatives to visit prisons holding people sentenced to death and seek attendance at trials of those charged with capital crimes. Given the crisis of impunity for mass arbitrary executions, states must also pursue meaningful pathways for holding Iranian officials to account.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/stop-the-execution-spree-in-iran/

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Panic spreads in Iran after new suspected poison attacks on girls schools

Mon, 01 May 2023 23:03:00 +0000

The Washington Post | Babak Dehghanpisheh | April 26, 2023

It was 10:30 a.m. on a Tuesday when the teacher began receiving frantic calls. There had been a gas attack on the girls elementary school where she taught, in the Kurdish region of western Iran.

She had not been in class that April morning but rushed to the school and found a chaotic scene: Students and a few of her fellow teachers were having difficulty breathing and said their eyes were burning. Some of the teachers had been beaten by furious parents and were crying, she said. Agents from the Ministry of Intelligence had arrived to investigate.

The teacher spoke to The Washington Post on the condition that her name and the location of her school not be revealed, fearing retaliation from the government.

In recent months across Iran, about 300 suspected gas attacks have hit more than 100 girls schools, according to Amnesty International. Deputy Health Minister Saeed Karimi said last month that 13,000 students had been treated for symptoms of suspected poisoning, according to the Shargh daily newspaper. No deaths were reported.

The attacks began in November in the holy city of Qom. A lull occurred when schools were closed for Nowruz, the Iranian new year, in late March. But the attacks appear to have picked up again over the past couple of weeks as schools reopened, sparking widespread panic and confusion.

“The parents are really scared, and a lot of them won’t send their kids to school anymore,” the teacher said in a telephone interview. “Some parents have said they are willing to have their child held back a year at school just to keep them out of danger.”

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in early March that those behind the attacks must be brought to justice. Soon after, the Ministry of Interior announced that more than 100 people in 11 provinces had been arrested. “Among those arrested are individuals with hostile motives with the goal of creating fear and panic among the people and students and to close schools and create a negative view toward the authorities,” the ministry said in a statement in the publication Hamshahri.

No charges appear to have been filed against those arrested.

The head of the Iranian parliament’s education committee, Alireza Monadi, said last month that tests conducted by the Ministry of Health had detected nitrogen gas in schools in Qom. But there has been no official government statement identifying what gas or gases may have been used.

“These have been very organized and coordinated attacks. It can’t be random people doing that,” said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the director of the Norway-based organization Iran Human Rights. “It’s either groups with the blessing of the authorities or forces within the authorities.”

A spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York did not respond to a request for comment.

The teacher in the Kurdish region said her colleagues reported smelling bleach and rotten fruit before falling ill. After the suspected attacks, schoolgirls have been hospitalized with symptoms including heart palpitations, vomiting and numbness in their limbs, according to Amnesty.

Two weeks ago, a 65-year-old man took his elderly mother to a hospital in the northeast city of Mashhad and found the lobby filled with about a dozen schoolgirls who he said were coughing and panting. He filmed the scene on his phone and shared the video with The Post.

The man said in an interview that he talked to one of the girls, who described sitting in class when she smelled something like sewage before feeling dizzy and short of breath.

Women and girls have been at the forefront of the anti-government uprising that erupted in September after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini was arrested for allegedly violating the country’s strict laws on female dress and died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.”

As the protests spread, hundreds of girls took off their headscarves at school and chanted anti-government slogans. In one video widely shared on social media in October, dozens of schoolgirls, many of them without the hijab, confronted a Ministry of Education official in the city of Karaj and chased him off the campus.

Women burning their headscarves became a defining image of the demonstrations, which have died down in recent weeks amid an increasingly brutal government crackdown. At least 530 people have been killed by security forces and nearly 20,000 detained, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. But some women and girls continue to protest the hijab law more casually — refusing to cover themselves in public while going about their daily activities.

“The issue of hijab and women is an Achilles’ heel for the leaders of the Islamic republic,” Mohammad Habibi, a spokesman for the Iranian Teachers’ Trade Association, told The Post in an interview from Tehran last month.

“The setting aside of forced hijab and the visibility of this at the social level was definitely not acceptable for the authorities, especially religious and extremist elements,” he added. “They could not accept this open social atmosphere.”

Habibi was arrested on April 5 and taken to Evin prison, his wife Khadijeh Pakzamir tweeted. On April 11, she tweeted that phone communication with him had been cut off.

Organized attacks against women have happened before in Iran. In 2014, at least four women were sprayed in the face with acid in the city of Isfahan in what many suspected was a campaign by religious extremists to enforce conservative dress codes. At the time, the government came under similar criticism for not pursuing the case more aggressively. Although arrests were made, no one was charged in the attacks.

The government has tried to point to other possible causes for the illnesses at girls schools, according to activists and health-care workers. Official meetings have been organized at hospitals to inform medical personnel about the Ministry of Health’s protocols for dealing with suspected poisoning cases.

Doctors have been told they should console the victims and their families and tell them it is a stress-related issue, a psychiatrist who attended two recent meetings at a hospital in northern Mazandaran province said in an interview. They also spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, fearing backlash from the authorities.

The World Health Organization told The Post that it “has offered support to [Iran’s] Ministry of Health in the management of these events from a public health perspective” and that an expert team “is on standby for deployment should this be requested.”

The teacher at the elementary school in the Kurdish region said that two of her colleagues were hospitalized after the suspected gas attack. She said one of them told her last week that she was still experiencing terrible headaches and numbness in her hands and feet.

Intelligence agents have returned to the school several times, she said, interviewing administrators and confiscating CCTV footage. The principal of the school told her that agents appeared to be looking for footage of parents, some of whom chanted anti-government slogans and argued with them.

“Many people suspect the government is responsible,” said the teacher. “They say that the government is trying to discourage girls from coming to school or that the government doesn’t want the ‘woman, life, freedom’ movement to start up again.”

Panic spreads in Iran after new suspected poison attacks on girls schools

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Child detainees in Iran subjected to flogging, Shocks and sexual violence

Wed, 29 Mar 2023 21:34:52 +0000

CHILD DETAINEES IN IRAN SUBJECTED TO FLOGGING, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN BRUTAL PROTEST CRACKDOWN

Amnesty International | March 16, 2023

Iran’s intelligence and security forces have been committing horrific acts of torture, including beatings, flogging, electric shocks, rape and other sexual violence against child protesters as young as 12 to quell their involvement in nationwide protests, said Amnesty International today.

Marking six months of the unprecedented popular uprising in Iran, sparked by the death in custody of Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, Amnesty International reveals the violence meted out to children arrested during and in the aftermath of protests. The research exposes the torture methods that the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary Basij, the Public Security Police and other security and intelligence forces used against boys and girls in custody to punish and humiliate them and to extract forced “confessions.”

“Iranian state agents have torn children away from their families and subjected them to unfathomable cruelties. It is abhorrent that officials have wielded such power in a criminal manner over vulnerable and frightened children, inflicting severe pain and anguish upon them and their families and leaving them with severe physical and mental scars. This violence against children exposes a deliberate strategy to crush the vibrant spirit of the country’s youth and stop them from demanding freedom and human rights,” said Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“The authorities must immediately release all children detained solely for peacefully protesting. With no prospect of effective impartial investigations into the torture of children domestically, we call on all states to exercise universal jurisdiction over Iranian officials, including those with a command or superior responsibility, reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility for crimes under international law, including the torture of child protesters.”

Since the start of Amnesty International’s investigations into the Iranian authorities’ brutal crackdown on the uprising, the organization has documented the cases of seven children in detail. The organization obtained testimonies from the victims and their families, as well as further testimonies on the widespread commission of torture against scores of children from 19 eyewitnesses, including two lawyers and 17 adult detainees who were held alongside children. The victims and eyewitnesses interviewed were from provinces across Iran, including East Azerbaijan, Esfahan, Golestan, Kermanshah, Khorasan-e Razavi, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Mazandaran, Sistan and Baluchestan, Tehran, and Zanjan.

Amnesty International has removed any reference to identifying details, such as the ages of the children and the provinces in which they were detained, in order to protect them and their families against reprisals.

MASS DETENTION OF CHILDREN

Iranian authorities have admitted that the total number of people detained in connection with the protests was above 22,000. While they have not provided a breakdown of how many of those detained were children, state media reported that children comprised a significant portion of protesters. Based on testimonies of dozens of detainees from across the country who witnessed security forces detaining scores of children, coupled with the fact that children and youth have been at the forefront of protests, Amnesty International estimates that thousands of children could have been among those swept up in the wave of arrests.

Amnesty International’s findings indicate that arrested children, like adults, were first taken, often while blindfolded, to detention centers run by the Revolutionary Guards, the Ministry of Intelligence, the Public Security Police, the investigation unit of Iran’s police (Agahi) or the Basij paramilitary force. After days or weeks of incommunicado detention or enforced disappearance, they were moved to recognized prisons. Plainclothes agents abducted others from the streets during or in the aftermath of protests, took them to unofficial places such as warehouses, where they tortured them before abandoning them in remote locations. Such abductions were conducted without any due process and were intended to punish, intimidate and deter children from participating in protests.

Many children have been held alongside adults, contrary to international standards, and subjected to the same patterns of torture and other ill-treatment. A former adult detainee told Amnesty International that, in one province, Basij agents forced several boys to stand with their legs apart in a line alongside adult detainees and administered electric shocks to their genital area with stun guns.

Most of the children arrested over the past six months appear to have been released, sometimes on bail pending investigations or referral to trial. Many were only released after being forced to sign “repentance” letters and promising to refrain from “political activities” and to attend pro-government rallies.

Before releasing them, state agents often threatened children with the prosecution on charges carrying the death penalty or with the arrest of their relatives if they complained.

In at least two cases documented by Amnesty International, despite the threat of reprisals, victims’ families filed official complaints before judicial authorities, but none were investigated.

RAPE AND OTHER SEXUAL VIOLENCE

Amnesty International’s documentation also reveals that state agents used rape and other sexual violence, including electric shocks to genitals, touching genitals, and rape threats as a weapon against child detainees to break their spirits, humiliate and punish them,

and/or extract “confessions.” This pattern is also widely reported by adult women and men detainees.

State agents also hurled sexual slurs at detained girls and accused them of wanting to bare their naked bodies simply for protesting for women’s and girls’ rights and defying compulsory veiling.

One mother told Amnesty International that state agents raped her son with a hosepipe while he forcibly disappeared. She said:

“My son told me: ‘They hung [me] to the point that I felt like my arms were about to rip off. I was forced to say what they wanted because they raped me with a hosepipe. They were taking my hand and forcibly making me fingerprint the papers’.”

BEATINGS, FLOGGINGS, ELECTRIC SHOCKS AND OTHER ABUSES

Security forces regularly beat children at the time of arrest, in vehicles during transfer, and in detention centers. Other torture methods recounted include floggings, administering electric shocks using stun guns, the forced administration of unidentified pills, and holding children’s heads underwater.

In one case, several schoolboys were abducted for writing the protest slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” on a wall. A relative of one of the victims told Amnesty International that plainclothes state agents abducted the boys, took them to an unofficial location, tortured and threatened to rape them, and then dumped them semi-conscious in a remote area hours later. The boy told the relative:

“They gave us electric shocks, hit me in my face with the back of a gun, gave electric shocks to my back and beat me on my feet, back and hands with batons. They threatened that if we told anyone, they would [detain us again], do even worse and deliver our corpses to our families.”

Victims and families told Amnesty International how state agents also choked children, suspended them from their arms or from scarves wrapped around their necks, and forced them to perform humiliating acts.

One boy recounted:

“They told us [over a dozen people] to make chicken noises for half an hour – for so long that we ‘lay eggs’. They forced us to do push-ups for one hour. I was the only child there. In another detention center, they put 30 of us in a cage made for five people.”

State agents also used psychological torture, including death threats, to punish and intimidate children and/or compel them to make forced “confessions”. State media has broadcast the “forced confessions” of at least two boys detained during protests.

The mother of a girl who was detained by the Revolutionary Guards told Amnesty International:

“They accused her of burning headscarves, insulting the Supreme Leader and wanting to overthrow [the Islamic Republic], and told her she will be sentenced to death. They threatened her not to tell anyone … They forced her to sign and fingerprint documents. She has nightmares and doesn’t go anywhere. She can’t even read her schoolbooks.”

Children were also held in cruel and inhuman detention conditions, including extreme overcrowding, poor access to toilet and washing facilities, deprivation of sufficient food and potable water, exposure to extreme cold and prolonged solitary confinement. Girls were held by all-male security forces with no regard for their gender-specific needs. Children were also denied adequate medical care, including for injuries sustained under torture.

https://www.amnestyusa.org/press-releases/child-detainees-in-iran-subjected-to-flogging-electric-shocks-and-sexual-violence-in-brutal-protest-crackdown/

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