Draft Resolution In Congress Voices Support For Secular, Democratic Iran

The German lawmakers also urged the authorities of the Islamic Republic not to issue or carry out death penalties against the prisoners.

Meanwhile, a group of Australian Senators and members of House of Representatives also demanded more pressure on the Islamic Republic.

Senator Claire Chandler told Iran International that “we want to see the IRGC listed as a terrorist organization... We want to make very clear to the world that we are concerned about the human rights abuses that are happening in Iran.”

Senator Jordon Steele-John also told Iran International’s correspondent that “Australia has been very slow in acting and very hesitant to act… It took more than three months for Australia to do anything like what it should have done. So we welcome finally the imposition of broader sanctions.”

On the other hand, Member of Parliament Keith Wolahan stated that the Australian Attorney General's Department has said there were legal [restraints] to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization, [but] if that is the case, we call on the government to introduce a bill to the House of Representatives.”

Iran has witnessed nationwide protests since mid-September after Mahsa Amini was killed in police custody. Over 500 protesters have been killed by the regime forces and thousand are arrested.

“There are three countries we have excluded: Russia, Iran, North Korea,” said German diplomat Christoph Heusgen, who is the chairman of the conference, in an interview published Wednesday.

“We don't want the Munich Security Conference to serve as a podium for Russian propaganda,” Heusgen added.

Russia’s opposition, including chess champion Garry Kasparov and exiled former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky are invited to the event instead of delegates from the Russian government.

The names of the Iranian participants have not been announced.

“After violations of international law and the brutal attack of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and police against their own population, we no longer have any standing invitations for Iran,” Christoph Heusgen, the chairman of the conference, told Global Insider.

Although the last round of the conference was held before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov did not participate and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock criticized Moscow’s non-participation in the event.

French President Emmanuel Macron, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, and Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO) Jens Stoltenberg are among the participants of this conference, which slated to be held from February 17 to 19.

Obtained by the hacktivist group Edalat-e Ali (Ali's Justice), the document clearly shows how the Iranian government’s repression machine covers up rape and sexual abuse by its agents.

Edalat-e Ali has been leaking sensitive information about Iran’s security forces and conditions in prisons.

Reports about detained protesters began trickling in in November and since then there have been many victims and families who have disclosed what happened to them.

Alireza Sadeqi and Alireza Hosseini are two IRGC agents referred to in a letter dated October 13, 2022, from Mohammad Shahriari, deputy prosecutor and head of General and Revolutionary Courts, district 27, to Ali Salehi, prosecutor at Tehran General and Revolutionary Courts, about the arrest and the subsequent rape of the two women.

Agents, who rape with impunity

As the deputy prosecutor informs his superior in the letter, the two women contact police station No. 124 in Tehran and report being arrested and then raped by agents on October 3.

Shahriari instantly notes that the two women’s complaint has not been registered after “coordination with Hefa [Persian acronym for the police intelligence agency]”.

It is also mentioned that a person, allegedly an agent, named Alireza Sadeqi has been detained along with his father at their home in Tehran’s Pirouzi street, where loads of batons, ammunitions, bulletproof jackets, police radios, handcuffs, IDs for different organizations such as the Law Enforcement Command (police), IRGC and the Judicial system have been found as well as a hoard of dollar bills and drugs.

Alireza Hosseini, an IRGC captain in charge of the intelligence division of Imam Hassan unit, was also arrested and transferred to a prison belonging to a police intelligence unit, the letter continues, adding that his motorbike had been found in the house of the “accused [previously] detained”.

In the letter it is not clear exactly how the two agents were identified and arrested.

The letter further details how they admitted to raping the two women, with Sadeqi acknowledging that they detained the two women near a gas station while on a mission in Sattarkhan street, in western Tehran.

Superiors ordered them to free the women because at the time there were no facilities available for their detention. Apparently, the accused took the women back to where they were picked up and that is when the rape took place.

Confessing to raping the women, Sadeqi argued that it was one of the women who initiated sexual advances in the car and that he recited “Sigheh”, a private and verbal temporary marriage contract which is supposed to make an intercourse religiously permissible. He also dropped the names of his colleagues, Alireza Hosseini, Hojjat Keivanlou and Ali Shahroudi, alleging that they might have raped the other woman, according to the letter.

Alireza Hosseini, however, refused to admit to any sexual abuse at first, stating that the arrests were made based on suspicions that the women were protesters.

He later confessed to the crime by saying: “I saw Sadeqi speaking to one of the female detainees and advised him to keep his distance. After a couple of minutes, I saw him groping [NAME REDACTED]’s back. I told him to stop but he pushed the second girl, named [NAME REDACTED], towards me. I shook my head in disbelief, wondering what’s going on!’”

His subsequent testimony appears to recount how Sadeqi coerced the woman to have oral sex as he was “standing with the front side of his pants pulled down and [NAME REDACTED] was busy…”.

About his own case, Hosseini pointed the finger at the woman, alleging that she said, “For God’s sake, let us loose,” while undoing his fly.

Attempt to defend abusive agents

In a blatant attempt, to understate the agents’ misconduct in the document, the deputy prosecutor concludes that “the defendants merely formed a gang for extortion or abduction and committed criminal acts”. In this part of the letter, terms such as “independent detention centers”, “torturing of people”, “extortion” and “widespread relationship with women and girls” stand out.

The document finally reveals how the Islamic Republic’s repression machine shuts down cases related to sexual misconduct by agents as it reads: “Considering the problematic nature of the case, the possibility of this information being leaked to social media and its misrepresentation by enemy groups, it is recommended that necessary orders be issued for it to be filed in the ‘Top Secret’ category. Since no complaint has been registered and the defendants have been dismissed, it is advised that the case is gradually closed without any reference to the involved military institutions.”

Since mass demonstrations began in Iran in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s death in the hands of the so-called morality police last September, multiple reports have been released, offering evidence of rape and sexual abuse of female protesters from the time of detention to interrogations. There have also been reports suggesting that security forces target women with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts, and genitals.

The latest document adds to a trove of evidence that Iran’s security forces, engaged in torture and sexual violence, can act with impunity to advance the Islamic Republic’s repression of dissent.

Ruhollah Momen-Nasab said in an interview with Ensaf News that if some of those who sell VPNs were hanged, “the others would learn a lesson.”

The government has been severely restricting Internet access in general and access to popular social media platforms, such as Instagram, that play a key role in e-commerce.

The authoritarian regime has been restricting access to many websites for more than two decades, with more restrictions put in place since last year. It is extremely nervous that people use the Internet and social media to share news and images about protests that swept the country since September.

In February, 18 members of an ad hoc parliamentary committee said they had ratified the outlines of a bill to officially restrict internet and social media access.

Earlier, Momen-Nasab, who is a parliamentary special advisor on the so-called 'Legislation to Protect Cyberspace Users' and former commander of the cyber army revealed how Tehran has been using twitter for propaganda.

“We created new accounts on Twitter, using the persona of other Twitter influencers who were mainly counter-revolutionary activists. Ours just differed in a single character and was quite similar to the real one. We used the same picture and the same name, but everything was fake. Once created, we started our activities,” Momen Nasab told the state TV last year.

Bahram Einollahi said in an interview with Fars News Agency on Tuesday that public hospitals have been required to comply with the hijab law and provide services to women by female staff.

“Women's ultrasound should be performed by women, and in some cases that we do not have enough radiologists, we ask female general practitioners and gynecologists to be given short-term training,” underlined the minister.

His comments are made in a situation that the recent protest movement in Iran was triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman, when she was arrested by the ‘morality police’ for ‘improper hijab.’

During the nationwide protests, many women removed the mandatory hijab and set their headscarves on fire in the streets as a sign of protest.

Western governments, including the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, added the hijab law enforcement unit to their list of sanctioned entities.

A lawmaker said in December that the regime is making some changes about hijab rules. He added “it is possible that women who do not observe hijab would be informed via SMS, asking them to respect the law. After notifying them, we enter the warning stage... and last, the bank account of the person who unveiled may be blocked."