Free Republic

By now, most people know that the Iranian regime treats its dissidents with unrestrained barbarity. Even the leading dead tree media have reported anecdotally on the torture of prisoners and the bashing, beating, axing and stabbing of protestors in the streets of the major cities. But it is not easy to get a clear picture of the dimensions of the savagery. It’s hard to get the real numbers on the bloody repression the mullahs have unleashed on their people, and one reason–perhaps the most important one–is that the regime is doing everything in its power to conceal the facts, typically...

According to Majid Ansari, member of the Association of Combatant Clerics, cases of sexual abuse of prisoners are certain and the evidence regarding them has been already handed to officials of the Islamic Republic. Mehdi Karoubi, a disputing candidate of the recent presidential elections in Iran, was the first to officially publicize reports of the alleged sexual assault. In a letter to Hashemi Rafsanjani, Chairman of Council of Experts, he had urged an immediate investigation of the reports. After ten days, having received no response from Ayatollah Rafsanjani, he released the letter to the media. While Karoubi and Ansari and...

TEHERAN - IRAN'S powerful conservative camp rejected on Wednesday claims that election protesters were raped in custody and issued a stern warning to opposition leader Mehdi Karroubi for raising the allegations. As the political turmoil raged on, lawmakers urged Iran to review ties with Western nations they accuse of 'meddling' in its affairs, saying the United States, Britain and France was backing opposition groups. 'The issue of detainees being sexually abused is a lie,' parliament speaker Ali Larijani told the assembly, the official IRNA news agency reported. 'Following an investigation of detainees in Kahrizak and Evin prisons, no cases of...

A prisoner forced to confess tries to speak with his eyes - to tell those watching that he's admitting to crimes he never committed because he's been broken by days alone in a cell and interrogators' threats to his family and loved ones. And because it's the only way to get free, said Ebrahim Nabavi, a popular Iranian satirist whose televised confession came after he spent more than three months in prison in 2000 for his written jabs at the ruling clerics. Nabavi believes he saw the same thing happen as he watched two of Iran's most prominent pro-reform politicians...