En gruppe reformist-parlamentarikere i Iran offentligjorde fredag et brev der de sier at behandlingen demonstrantene får i iranske fengsler er verre enn Abu Ghraib og Guantanamo. Det er mye seksuell mishandling. Jenter og gutter voldtas.
Det var presidentkandidat Mahdi Karroubi som denne uken sa han satt på håndfaste bevis for at ungdommer voldtas.
Det fikk hardlinere til å gå amok i fredagsbønnen og kreve at Karroubi blir arrestert og stilt for rettten for falske anklager. Presidenten for nasjonalforsamlingen, Ali Larijani, sa voldtektsanklagene ikke stemmer, men Karroubi blåste av det. Han sa ingen greier å undersøke en sak så fort. Han sa også at han har gode kilder og ga en detaljert beskrivelse av torturen.
This week, a top Mousavi ally, Mahdi Karroubi, went further, claiming that male and female detainees had been raped by their jailers. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani quickly denied the allegations, saying a parliament probe into the allegations had found no truth in the reports.
During his sermon at Tehran’s main Friday prayers, hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami denounced Karroubi’s claims as “full of libel, a total slander against the Islamic system” and demanded he be prosecuted.
“We expect the Islamic system to show an appropriate response to this,” Khatami said.
In what appears to be a coordinated move, the prayer leaders in the northeastern city of Mashhad and the holy city of Qom, southeast of the capital, made similar calls Friday in their sermons, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Despite the uproar, Karroubi pressed ahead, saying he received testimonies from prisoners who recounted undergoing Abu Ghraib-like abuse and said they had seen other prisoners tortured to death.
Some detainees were “forced to go naked, crawl on their hands knees and knees like animals, with prison guards riding on their backs.” Others were forced to lie “naked, on top of one another,” Karroubi said in a statement late Thursday.
“Young people were beaten severely … to death because they chanted slogans,” said Karroubi, a cleric who also ran in the June 12 election. “It is deplorable that people detained over election protests are tortured. Do such treatments conform with Islam, which is a religion of mercy?”
Karroubi said the reports came from Tehran’s Kahrizak prison, which has been at the center of abuse claims and was orderd closed by Khamenei this month in an attempt to ease the uproar.
Karroubi criticized Larijani’s speedy denial of the rape allegations, saying no probe could have been completed that fast. He also vowed he won’t remain silent over the “medieval torture and corruption” in Iran’s prisons.
“Insults and criticism won’t make me silent. I’ll defend the rights of the people as long as I’m alive and you can’t stop my tongue, hand and pen,” said Karroubi, leader of the reformist National Confidence Party.
-Verre enn Abu Ghraib
En gruppe tidligere reformist-parlamentarikere offentliggjorde et brev fredag der de ber Ekspertrådet innlede en granskning av Den øverste leder for å se om Ali Khamenei er skikket til oppgaven. Ingen har noen gang stilt spørsmål ved Den øverste leders kompetanse på denne måten. Det er uhørt.
The letter, reported in opposition Web sites, came from a group of former lawmakers, most of them from the reform camp. The reports did not say how many signed the letter.
In it, they sharply denounce the crackdown, in which hundreds of protesters and opposition politicians were arrested and, the opposition says, 69 people were killed. They also denounce the trial that began this month of 100 politicians and activists accused of seeking to topple the Islamic Republic through the wave of protests that erupted over the election.
The letter calls it a “show trial” and a “Stalinesque court” and said Kahrizak prison — the facility on Tehran’s outskirts where much of the abuse allegedly took place — was worse than the U.S. prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
The former lawmakers said the supreme leader is responsible for the judicial system and the security forces who carried out the crackdown, adding that Iran’s constitution underlines that “the supreme leader is on the same level as the rest of the people before the law.”
Noe har skjedd når opposisjonen i et muslimsk land sier at myndighetene i landet er verre enn Abu Ghraib.