A document was leaked from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) detailing how Nika Shakarami, a 16-year-old girl who disappeared from a protest in 2022 before her body was found a few days later, was molested and killed by the regime's security forces, BBC reported on Tuesday.
Shakarami disappeared from an anti-regime protest in Tehran in September 2022. Her body was found several days later, with the regime claiming she had committed suicide or fallen from a roof. Relatives of Shakarami, including her mother, were placed under pressure by the government, with Shakarami's aunt and uncle forced to repeat the same narrative in forced confessions.
Shakarami's mother told Radio Farda on Tuesday the regime had been placing pressure on her to repeat the regime's narrative about her daughter's death. She stressed that regime security forces had killed her daughter and that forensic evidence showed that she had been killed by "multiple blows with a hard object."
The document revealed by the BBC on Tuesday was marked "highly confidential" and summarizes a hearing on Shakarami's case that was held by the IRGC.
The BBC said that it spent months checking every detail of the report with multiple sources to ensure its authenticity, including by checking with a former Iranian intelligence officer. The officer called the IRGC archive to check if the case file really existed and found that it was part of a 322-page case file on anti-government protests in 2022.
According to the report, several undercover security units were monitoring the demonstration Shakarami was taking part in at Laleh Park. An undercover officer disguised as a protester entered the crowd to confirm that Shakarami was one of the leaders of the demonstration. He called in his team to arrest her, but she fled the scene.
An hour later, she was detained and placed in an unmarked van. The unit that arrested her tried to bring her to a temporary police camp nearby but was unable to due to overcrowding. They then decided to bring her to a detention center but then changed their mind as Shakarami was "constantly swearing and chanting."
"At that time, there were 14 other female detainees at the station, and my perception was that she could agitate the others. I was worried she would cause a riot," wrote Morteza Jalil, the leader of the team that arrested Shakarami, in the leaked document.
After contacting his IRGC HQ for instructions, Jalil was told to bring Shakarami to Tehran's Evin Prison, where many political prisoners are kept. Prisoners at the prison are frequently tortured and abused, according to leaked documents and testimony from prisoners.
Another member of the team, Behrooz Sadeghy, wrote in the document that after Shakarami was put in the van, she began to swear and shout, so the officers gagged her with socks and sat on her.
Arash Kalhor, another member of the team, wrote that Sadegh Monjazy, another officer, "put his hand inside her pants."
"I started to kick and punch but really didn't know if I was hitting our guys or the accused," wrote Kalhor, adding that he could hear Shakarami being hit with a baton.
Monjazy claimed that Kalhor's was lying and was making claims motivated by professional jealousy, but added that he touched her buttocks and could not deny that he became "aroused" while sitting on Shakarami. Monjazy said that after molesting Shakarami, she scratched him and jolted so he fell over.
"She kicked at my face, so I had to defend myself," wrote Monjazy, according to the BBC. Jalil, who was in the front seat, ordered the driver to pull over and opened the rear door, finding Shakarami's lifeless body alongside the three other members of his team.
Jalil added that Shakarami's face and head "were not in a good condition." He called the IRGC HQ again for advice, and a senior officer codenamed "Naeem 16" told him to "dump her on the street" as he didn't want the number of deaths at IRGC stations to rise any more than they already had. Jalil said he left her body under Tehran's Yadegar-e-Emam highway.
The IRGC report found that the officers used three batons and three tasers against Shakarami.
The IRGC officer who the BBC consulted to confirm the authenticity of the document was able to discover that the officer codenamed "Naeem 16" was in fact Captain Mohammad Zamani, an officer in the IRGC.
Last year, the Edaalate Ali hacker group published a document it said was a forensic report by Iran's National Forensic Medicine Organization, detailing that Shakarami was killed after being hit by a hard object several times and that there were signs she had been molested. Iranian state television claimed that the document was fake at the time.
In 2022, protests swept Iran after Mahsa Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, was beaten by Tehran "Morality Police" and died due to her wounds. The demonstrations, commonly referred to as the “Woman, Life, Liberty” (“Jin, Jiyan, Azadî” in Kurdish) protests, continued in full strength for months on end.
Islamic regime intensifies crackdown on hijab laws, political prisoners
The leak of the IRGC report comes as the regime intensifies its crackdown on hijab laws, violently arresting many women in several cities. The regime has also issued severe sentences against political prisoners in recent weeks, including rapper Toomaj Salehi, who was sentenced to death last week.
On Tuesday, Salehi's lawyer, Amir Raesian, posted on X that Salehi had been cut off from accessing the phone in Isfahan's Dastgerd prison since Saturday.
An X account affiliated with Salehi posted on Tuesday that the rapper's phone privileges had been cut off.
Toomaj’s phone privileges at Isfahan’s Dastgerd prison were cut off. This means he has zero contactwith his family and the outside world.Furthermore, in a move meant to inflict maximum psychological pressure on him, all prisoners at Dastgerd have been forbidden from speaking…
— توماج صالحی (@OfficialToomaj) April 30, 2024
"This means he has zero contact with his family and the outside world," wrote the account, adding that all prisoners in the prison had been forbidden from speaking to Salehi in order to "inflict maximum psychological pressure on him."
"This is a gross violation of Toomaj’s human rights, and must immediately stop," stressed the account.
Tzvi Joffre contributed to this report.