Photo: Karim Sahib (AFP)

Iran Protests: “They Gagged Us With Our Hijabs” — The Abuse and Rape of Detainees

Iran Protests: Doctors Tortured in Prison

h1>UPDATE, 1404 GMT:

The Iranian regime’s presentation of success through President Ebrahim Raisi’s visit to China has run into trouble.

State media have been proclaiming the signature of 20 memoranda without identifying any specific economic achievements.

Meanwhile, China’s Sinopec has pulled out of the development of the Yadavaran oilfield.

Sinopec cited the obstacle of sanctions against Tehran.

Mojtaba Moradi of Iran’s Oil Ministry tried to put a positive spin on the development:

After about a six-year hiatus in development activities, the implementation of the project to increase the field’s output will begin.

The development project will be carried out by Iranian experts and engineers, using domestically made parts and equipment.

The Yadavaran hydrocarbon deposit, shared with Iraq, is in Khuzestan Province in southwest Iran. Its crude reserve is estimated at more than 34 billion barrels.

UPDATE 1105 GMT:

Sunni clerics are stepping up their challenge to Iran’s Shia leadership.

Hassan Amini, leader of the the Kurdistan Jurisprudence Assembly, says more than 20 Sunni religious scholars have been arrested in Kurdish cities in northwest Iran for accompanying protesters. Several others have been summoned and interrogated.

Amini said the regime is seeking to suppress the protests “while none of the people’s demands have received a positive response from the government”.

Sunni leaders have not refrained from writing protest statements, giving speeches, and raising demands. But the government doesn’t tolerate that, telling people, ‘You shouldn’t talk, you shouldn’t make demands.

The Sunni movement has also been significant in southeast Iran where Molavi Abdulhamid, the Friday Prayer leader of Zahedan, has criticized Iranian officials — including the Supreme Leader — over the killing of worshippers and protesters. Abdulhamid has called for an independent referendum to determine the future of the Islamic Republic.

The regime has responded by detaining Abdulhamid’s assistant Molavi Abdulmajid as well as prominent cleric Molavi Naqshbandi.

UPDATE 1024 GMT:

The Iranian rial has sunk 1.2#5% on Thursday to a new all-time low of 477,400:1 v. the US dollar.

The rial has now lost more than 90% of its value since early 2018, when it was 45,000:1 v. the dollar. It has fallen about 35% since nationwide protests began on September 16.

UPDATE, FEB 16:

A scene of defiance amid the regime’s crackdown….

UPDATE 1313 GMT:

The Iranian rial has slid further to 471,900:1 v. the US dollar, losing about 3% on Wednesday.

UPDATE 0648 GMT:

Reza Khandan, the husband of human rights lawyer and long-time political prisoner Nasrin Sotoudeh, has been summoned to serve his own 6-year sentence.

Khandan was sentenced in 2019, days after Sotoudeh’s interview with the CNN about nationwide protests sparked by rising fuel prices. She emphasized that despite regime repression, Iranians still wanted a referendum on a new political system.

Sotoudeh, repeatedly detained since the mass demonstrations over the disputed Presidential election in 2009, was imprisoned again in 2020. She was condemned to a total of 33 years, at least 10 of which must be served.

UPDATE 0633 GMT:

Detained labor rights activist Narges Mansuri has been on hunger strike since January 29 to protest the “anti-human behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran”.

In a voice message from Tehran’s Evin Prison, Mansuri said she started the strike because she was banned from meeting her child, was threatened with execution, and was subjected to harsh behavior from interrogators whose actions “drive political prisoners to insanity”.

Mansuri was detained in May during a wave of arrests of labor and political activists. It was the latest of a series of detentions of the activist in recent years.

She is one of 14 women activists in Iran who have publicly called for the Supreme Leader to resign and for a political system within the framework of a new constitution that secures dignity and equal rights for women.

UPDATE 0617 GMT:

The Iranian currency has set another all-time low.

The rial has slid almost 2% on Wednesday and is now at 466,000 v. the US dollar.

The currency has lost 35% in value since the start of nationwide protests on September 16.

UPDATE 1149 GMT:

Award-winning Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasulof has been released from Tehran’s Evin Prison after seven months in detention.

Rasulof, winner of the top prize at the Berlin film festival for his 2020 film There Is No Evil, and fellow directors Jafar Panahi and Mostafa Aleahmad were seized last July. They were among the signatories of a letter criticizing the regime’s response — including a crackdown on protests — to the collapse of a building in Abadan in southern Iran which killed 43 people.

Panahi was released on bail on February 3, a day after he began a “hunger strike for freedom”.

UPDATE, FEB 14:

In the latest case of Tehran’s agents tracking — and threatening — exiles and members of Iran’s diaspora, Australia has disrupted a plot to surveil a critic of the Iranian regime.

Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil told the National Security College at the Australia National University:

Late last year, ASIO disrupted the activities of individuals who had conducted surveillance of the home of an Iranian-Australian, as well as extensive research of this individual and their family.

I’m pleased to say our agencies were on to it like a shot. ASIO tracked the operation and shut it down immediately.

The Department of Home Affairs notified a Senate inquiry that it was “aware of reports that pro-Iranian government informants are surveilling former Iranian residents protesting against the regime in Australia and threatening their relatives in Iran as a result”.

In recent years, Iranian intelligence agents have been accused of plotting assassinations, abductions, and bombings abroad, targeting Iranian nationals and Israeli citizens.

Assadollah Assadi was sentenced to a Belgian court to 20 years in prison in 2021 over a scheme to bomb a rallyn in Paris.

In late January, three men were charged by the US Justice Department over a plot to abduct and kill Iranian-American activist Masih Alinejad, who is based in New York.

UPDATE 1456 GMT:

Testimony to the abuse of detainees during Iran’s 21-week nationwide protests — footage of bodybuilder Khaled Pirzadeh, emaciated and struggling to move after his release from prison….

UPDATE 1429 GMT:

Hackers briefly interrupted President Ebrahim Raisi’s speech for the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Republic on Saturday.

Edalate Ali (The Justice of Ali) cut into Iranian State TV’s web service for about 30 seconds. They invited people to take part in nationwide protests next week and urged them to withdraw their money from banks. A message was accompanied by chants of “Death to [Supreme Leader] Khamenei” and “Death to the Islamic Republic”.

UPDATE 1345 GMT:

The Norway-based rights organization Hengaw says Iranian security forces have abducted about 400 Kurdish teenagers during the 21-week nationwide protests.

Hengaw said it has identified 186 of the victims so far. The youngest is aged 14.

Almost all of the abductions were in the provinces of Kurdistan, Kermanshah, West Azerbaijan, and Ilam in western Iran. One abduction was reported in Tehran.

The city of Javanrud had the most incidents with 28. There were 21 in Sanandaj and 14 in Saqqez.

Some of the juveniles were released after days or weeks of detention, during which they were kept in isolation. Hengaw said most were “subjected to severe interrogation with no regard for the children’s protection rights”.

UPDATE, FEB. 12:

The Iranian rial has sunk to another all-time low, dropping almost 2% in value since Friday.

The rial is now at 458,700:1 v. the US dollar, a fall of about 35% since nationwide protests began on September 16.

The replacement of the Central Bank Governor and the Bank’s intervention over the exchange rate have brought brief rebounds in the past month, only for any gains to dissipate within days.

UPDATE, FEB. 11:

French-Iranian academic Fariba Adelkhah has been released from Tehran’s Evin Prison after 3 1/2 years in detention.

It is still unclear whether Adelkhah has been freed for good — possibly under terms of a house arrest — or just given a temporary furlough.

“It is essential that all of Ms Fariba Adelkhah’s freedoms are restored, including returning to France if she wishes,” the French Foreign Ministry said.

Adelkhah, an anthropologist at Sciences Po University in Paris, and her partner and colleague Roland Marchal were seized in June 2019. Marchal was freed in March 2020 in a prisoner swap, but Adelkhah was given a 5-year sentence two months later.

The academic was furloughed under house arrest during the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020. She was returned to Evin in January 2022.

Adelkhah is one of seven French political prisoners held by Iran. Tourist Benjamin Briere, imprisoned in May 2020, was condemned to eight years in prison in December 2021. Teachers Cécile Kohler, 37, and Jacques Paris, 69, were seized last May.

UPDATE 2314 GMT:

An internal judicial document establishes that Revolutionary Guards members raped two women, and state prosecutors then covered up the sexual assault.

The women, 18 and 23, were raped in a police van during protests in September in Tehran. They had been detained for “acting suspiciously”.

Prosecutors learned about the rapes after one of the Revolutionary Guards officers called one of the victims. She recorded the conversation and filed a complaint.

The officer initially denied the charge, but then said the two women had consented to sex.

The two men were questioned and eventually admitted to intercourse with the detainees. But prosecutors declined to file charges because of “the problematic nature of the case, the possibility of the leaking of this information into social media, and its misrepresentation by enemy groups”.

See also Iran Protests: “They Gagged Us With Our Hijabs” — The Abuse and Rape of Detainees

UPDATE 2257 GMT:

Political prisoner Farhad Meysami has been freed after more than 4 1/2 years in detention.

Last week photos of an emaciated Meysami went viral on social media. He had lost 53 kg (117 lbs) after a hunger strike since October 7.

Meysami, a physician, was imprisoned in July 2018 over his activism, including the demand for an end to compulsory hijab.

UPDATE 2241 GMT:

Amid fireworks for the 44th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, people in Tehran and Karaj shout slogans such as “Death to [Supreme Leader] Khamenei!”:

UPDATE 2222 GMT:

Photographer Nooshin Ja’fari and journalist Raha Askarizadeh have been released after almost two years in detention.

Ja’fari was seized on February 16, 2021 to serve a 4-year sentence for “spreading anti-state propaganda” and “insulting sanctities”.

A cinema and theater photographer covering cultural issues for several Iranian magazines, Ja’fari was initially arrested in August 2019 after pro-regime social media accounts accused her of running a Twitter account that opposed the leadership.

Askarizadeh was summoned to prison on April 7, 2021 to serve a 2-year sentence. She had been arrested in 2019 for “acting against national security through meetings and collusion”.

Kurdish protester Zara Mohammadi says after her release from prison today, “Neither I nor my lawyer signed any plea for amnesty, and I never will do so!”:

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Iran’s leading Sunni cleric, Molavi Abdolhamid has stepped up his challenge to the regime.

Abdolhamid is the Friday Prayer Leader in Zahedan in southeast Iran, which has become the center of the country’s 21-week protests.

After security forces killed about 90 worshippers and protesters in Zahedan on September 30, Abdolhamid has become more vocal in criticism of the regime. He has said Iranian officials — including the Supreme Leader — are responsible for the killings, and he has called for an immediate referendum, with international observers present, to “change policies based on the wishes of the people”.

Iran Protests: Zahedan v. the Regime

In his sermon last Friday, he urged Iran’s Shia leadership to respect freedom of expression: “Don’t jail critics! Criticism is the cure for the country’s problems.”

On Thursday, he went farther with support of reformist calls for “foundational” change. He denounced the regime for the 12-year house arrests of Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, leaders of the Green Movements and challengers in the disputed 2009 Presidential election.

The cleric endorsed Mousavi’s appeal on February 4 for a “free” referendum in Iran and the drafting of a new Constitution based on the protest slogan of “Woman. Life. Freedom”.

Abdolhamid said Mousavi “understands the realities of society” and urged regime officials to do so as well.

Today, after Friday Prayers, people defied security forces and rallied on the streets of Zahedan for the 19th week in a row.