A large group of US Congresspeople have expressed support for a democratic, secular, and non-nuclear “Republic of Iran,” in a draft resolution that comes after five months of antigovernment protests.
Condemning violations of human rights and state-sponsored terrorism by the Iranian Government, the bipartisan group of Representatives submitted a resolution on Tuesday, which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. The motion was introduced by California's Republican lawmaker Tom McClintock and is cosponsored by 165 other representatives.
The resolution “calls on relevant United States Government agencies to work with European allies, including those in the Balkans where Iran has expanded its presence, to hold Iran accountable for breaching diplomatic privileges, and to call on nations to prevent the malign activities of the Iranian regime’s diplomatic missions, with the goal of closing them down and expelling its agents."
It also emphasizes that Washington “stands with the people of Iran who are legitimately defending their rights for freedom against repression, and condemns the brutal killing of Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime; and recognizes the rights of the Iranian people and their struggle to establish a democratic, secular, and nonnuclear Republic of Iran.”
The resolution mentions the popular antigovernment protests in 2017, which resulted in at least 25 deaths and 4,000 arrests, and the protests in November 2019, when about 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest, as well as the current wave of protests ignited by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman who was arrested in mid-September 2022 by the morality police that enforce the regime’s mandatory dress code laws.
Noting that women and youth have led the 2022 protests in Iran to demand social freedom and political change, the resolution describes the uprising as “rooted in the more than four decades of organized resistance against the Iranian dictatorship.” The ongoing unrest have been most recently led by women who have endured torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and death.
It also mentions executions and death sentences in recent months and calls for measures to force the government to cease such repression.
In the 116th Congress, the House of Representatives passed House Resolution 752, "Supporting the rights of the people of Iran to free expression, condemning the Iranian regime for its crackdown on legitimate protests, and for other purposes,” it adds, urging the Administration to work to convene emergency sessions of the United Nations Security Council and to work with United States partners and allies to condemn the ongoing human rights violations perpetrated by the Iranian regime and establish a mechanism by which the United Nations Security Council can monitor such violations.
The resolution also mentions efforts by the international community against the crackdown on dissent in Iran, saying that on November 24, 2022, the United Nations Human Rights Council established a fact-finding mission to conduct an independent investigation into the ongoing deadly violence related to the protests in Iran that began on September 16, 2022. It also mentioned the resolution adopted by United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on December 14, 2022, to expel Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) for the remainder of its 4-year term ending in 2026.
Enumerating other actions by the US against the human rights violations by the clerical regime, the House resolution referred to the Department of State’s 2021 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, released on April 13, 2022, which cites that “Iran’s government and its agents reportedly committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, most commonly executions for crimes not meeting the international legal standard of ‘most serious crimes’ or for crimes committed by juvenile offenders, as well as executions after trials without due process.”
“On October 25, 2021, the United Nations Special Rapporteur (UNSR) on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Javaid Rehman, told the United Nations General Assembly that almost all executions in the country constituted an arbitrary deprivation of life, noting the extensive, vague and arbitrary grounds in Iran for imposing the death sentence, which quickly can turn this punishment into a political tool,” read the resolution.
The resolution also condemns the Iranian regime’s arbitrary and brutal suppression of “ethnic and religious minorities, including Iranian Kurds, Baluchis, Arabs, Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and even Sunni Muslims,” noting that it deprived them of their basic human rights, and has in many cases executed them.
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.
