Image supply, ATASH SHAKARAMI
- Author, David Gritten
- Role, BBC News
Iran’s judiciary has filed fees towards “a number of journalists and activists” after the publication of a BBC report alleging males working for the safety forces sexually assaulted and killed a 16-year-old protester.
The judiciary-run Mizan information company described the BBC Eye investigation into Nika Shakarami’s death in 2022 as “fake, incorrect and full of mistakes”.
It didn’t establish the people summoned for allegedly “disrupting the psychological security of society”.
But two Iranian journalists who had commented on the report on-line mentioned prosecutors had opened circumstances towards them.
One of them, Mohammad Parsi, wrote on Twitter/X that the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office had summoned him for publishing an “article about Nika Shakarami and the details of her murder”.
The second, Marzieh Mahmoodi, posted that “neither the charges nor the details are known”.
On Wednesday, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi dismissed the findings of the BBC’s investigation as a plot by Iran’s enemies, changing into the primary official to remark publicly.
“Enemies and their media have resorted to false and unreal reports to carry out psychological operations,” he informed reporters outdoors a cupboard assembly, in response to state media.
Mr Vahidi claimed it was “an attempt to divert attention” from the present pro-Palestinian protests within the US in addition to Iran’s missile and drone assault on Israel final month.
There was no fast remark from BBC News on the statements by Mr Vahidi and the judiciary.
Nika Shakarami grew to become a logo of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest motion that shook the Islamic Republic two years in the past.
The protests erupted in response to the death in custody on 16 September 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old lady who had been detained by morality police within the capital for allegedly carrying her hijab “improperly”.
On 20 September 2022, Nika was filmed at a protest in Tehran setting fireplace to her headband, whereas different protesters chanted “death to the dictator” – a reference to the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
She disappeared that night after telling a buddy that she was being chased by safety forces.
Her household finally discovered her physique at a mortuary greater than every week later. They alleged that she died from blows to the pinnacle and rejected claims from officers that she had killed herself by leaping off the roof of a constructing.
The BBC Eye investigation, revealed on Monday, was based mostly on what is known to be a leaked inside doc summarising a listening to on Nika’s case held by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to the doc, {the teenager} was detained by members of a paramilitary group who had been deployed by the IRGC as an undercover staff to observe protests in Tehran that day.
The doc particulars a sequence of occasions that allegedly occurred whereas Nika was restrained at the back of an unmarked freezer van together with three members of the staff. These embrace:
- One of the boys molested her whereas he was sitting on her
- Despite being handcuffed and restrained, she fought again, kicking and swearing
- An admission that this provoked the boys to beat her to death with batons
- An IRGC officer ordered the boys to dump her physique on a road
The BBC report acknowledges there are quite a few pretend Iranian official paperwork in circulation, however says “extensive investigations indicate the papers we obtained do chronicle the teenager’s last movements”.
The BBC additionally put the allegations to the IRGC and the Iranian authorities earlier than publication and they didn’t reply.
