Rape

If you have any doubts that the Iran­ian gov­ern­ment is one of the most evil on the planet, read this inter­view with a mem­ber of the Basiji mili­tia:

When he was 16, “my mother took me to a Basiji sta­tion and begged them to take me under their wing because I had no one and noth­ing fore­see­able in my future. My father was mar­tyred dur­ing the war in Iraq and she did not want me to get hooked on drugs and become a street thug. I had no choice,” he said.

He said he had been a highly regarded mem­ber of the force, and had so “impressed my supe­ri­ors” that, at 18, “I was given the ‘honor’ to tem­porar­ily marry young girls before they were sen­tenced to death.”

In the Islamic Repub­lic it is ille­gal to exe­cute a young woman, regard­less of her crime, if she is a vir­gin, he explained. There­fore a “wed­ding” cer­e­mony is con­ducted the night before the exe­cu­tion: The young girl is forced to have sex­ual inter­course with a prison guard — essen­tially raped by her “husband…”

“I could tell that the girls were more afraid of their ‘wed­ding’ night than of the exe­cu­tion that awaited them in the morn­ing. And they would always fight back, so we would have to put sleep­ing pills in their food. By morn­ing the girls would have an empty expres­sion; it seemed like they were ready or wanted to die.

“I remem­ber hear­ing them cry and scream after [the rape] was over,” he said. “I will never for­get how this one girl clawed at her own face and neck with her fin­ger nails after­wards. She had deep scratches all over her.”

The rest is here. No com­men­tary is required.

Ear­lier: Neda Agha-Soltan