Karoubi: Prison Rape Undeniable

While early this week the three-member judiciary committee dismissed Mehdi Karoubi’s documented allegation of murder, abuse and rape of post-June 12 election detainees as lies and lacking legal basis, Karoubi wrote a letter directly to the Iranian people reiterating his earlier claims.  In his letter, Karoubi wrote, “I speak, so that it is recorded in history how some in this country torn up the veil of propriety and wounded religious and patriotic zeal and so that future generations will not say that this oppression occurred to the children of this land but no one raised his voice and no one raised an outcry in protest over this dishonor.”

Karoubi continued, “I could never have foreseen a day in which the Islamic republic would respond to people’s calm and peaceful demonstrations in the manner that it did. The people’s questions and doubts about the fate of their votes were answered not with proof and logic, but with bullets and batons, clubs and beating.”

Wishing that he was “not alive and had not seen the day in which a citizen of the Islamic Republic would come to [him] and complain that every variety of appalling and despicable acts were done to him in unknown buildings and by unknown people,” the former Majlis speaker listed the kinds of acts committed against detainees: “Stripping people and making them face each other and subjecting them to vile insults and urinating in their faces and releasing boys and girls with bound hands and eyes into the wilderness and raping boys and girls in detention facilities.”

The secretary-general of the E’temad Melli (National Trust) Party also complained of former Tehran Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi’s treatment of Karoubi’s first witness to and victim of rape, writing, “The judiciary of the Islamic regime, which compares itself to the policies of His Holiness the Commander of the Faithful [Imam Ali], sent an armed motorcyclist to pursue the complainants in order to hold a legal inquiry but intent on threatening.”  Karoubi added that his witness, who is from a religious family, has disappeared since.

Karoubi noted that he wrote this letter after his “pursuit of justice” through the judiciary failed, adding, “The ugliness has reached the point that instead of the perpetrators and propagators and people behind this oppression, they wan to prosecute Mehdi Karoubi.

At the end of his letter, secretary-general of the National Trust Party addressed the three-member judiciary committee’s recommendation to the judiciary chief for the prosecution of Mehdi Karoubi.  Advising the judiciary chief, Karoubi wrote, “do not be influenced by imposed and external wills and departs from the path of justice,” adding, “I submit to the judgment of the people and the divine court and end my writing on this matter right here.”

Meeting with Majlis Speaker

Following the publication of Karoubi’s letter, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani invited Karoubi for a meeting behind closed doors also attended by lawmaker Ghodratollah Alikhani. 

Although, according to Alikhani, details of this meeting will not be released, observers speculate that issued related to Mehdi Karoubi’s letter and evidence were discussed at this meeting.